My kids are supposed to live till they are one hundred. You don't have to have a perfect house or a perfect relationship with your child or a perfect child, and you yourself do not have to be perfect.

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

To be able to have the space to sit down and write has always been my central policy.

I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.

Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe.

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.