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

The writing day can be, in some ways, too short, but it's actually a long series of hours, for months at a time, and there is a stillness there.

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.

I have no place left to live but in my own heart.

One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised

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 work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.