But I can't bear it when somebody who some man made a pass at - to call that violence seems to me absurd and insulting to women who've really met violence, who've been raped or bashed.

But there are some wounds that can never be healed.

Now, I - for several years while I was researching this book, I felt quite obsessed by thoughts about sentencing, punishment, how judges arrive at their decisions.

The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.

It's a terrific privilege to be able to see into somebody else's life.

Well, I'm at some kind of crossroads in my life and I don't know which way to take. It's not about money, I mean, because I'm established enough now as a writer to get a reasonable advance if I wanted to do fiction.

But I now think what I was doing, in a completely unconscious way, was getting off the turf where my husband and I might be rivals. We were both working in fiction... so I look back and I see that I consciously vacated the contested ground.