Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.

I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.

When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life.

Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.