Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.

She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size.. It seemed so natural, to talk to him about odd things. She had never done that before. The trust, so sudden and yet so complete, and the intimacy, frightened her.. But now she could think only of all the things she yet wanted to tell him, wanted to do with him.

Death would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.

I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds.'

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls 'You can have ambition, but not too much'.

Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.

Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.