Sometimes I will spend two or three days not speaking to anyone outside of the immediate family when they come home, and then I find that I've been emailing like fury. Once you give in to that silence, it's quite nice.

I think it’s very important to write a demythologized woman character. My characters are flawed. They are no better than they should be.

We have lost the art of public tenderness, these small gestures of wiping and washing; we have forgotten how abjectly the body welcomes a formal touch.

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

Sometimes I will spend two or three days not speaking to anyone outside of the immediate family when they come home, and then I find that I've been emailing like fury. Once you give in to that silence, it's quite nice.

Cats, I always think, only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat.

I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from.