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

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

Having kids is very difficult to do on your own, and it's really crazy difficult to think you're doing it as a team and to find out that you're not actually part of a team.

Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

Nothing had happened yet in my life except the need to get out of it.

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

No woman that I know is capable of leaving her child down for thirty seconds. She can't walk away without making sure that everything is absolutely as secure and safe for her child as can be.