It is very hard to trace the effect of words on a life.

I think young children in the Western middle classes are objects of incredible anxiety.

There's quite a big gap when it comes to that dual identity of mother and child, or even a pregnant woman, or a nursing woman. It kind of begs the question of that very strong Western idea of the individual self.

I do not believe in evil- I believe that we are human and fallible, that we things and spoil them in an ordinary way.

I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. The Gathering did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.

I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead

Story is about pulling the reader in and a plot is a more externalized mechanism of revelation. A plot is more antic, more performative, and less intimate. When you're telling a story you're telling it into someone's ear.