I have always paid careful attention to social and economic conflicts, to the dialectic - if we can call it that - between high and low. Maybe it's because I was not born or brought up in affluence.

The fictional treatment of biographical material - a treatment that for me is essential - is full of traps.

The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose

The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.

I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

As a girl - twelve, thirteen years old - I was absolutely certain that a good book had to have a man as its hero, and that depressed me.

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.