Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.

Literary critics make natural detectives.

I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.

I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.