If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.

You write a book and you finish the book. That's your job done, right? You win the Booker and you have a whole new job. You have to be the thing, right? So instead of writing the story, you somehow are the story. And that I found that sort of terrible.

I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful; people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can't.

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

I never wanted to be mainstream as a writer, but look at what's happened.

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

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.