Working-class families in the north of England used to hear the 1611 Bible regularly at church and at home ... for us, the language didn't seem too difficult. I especially liked 'the quick and the dead' - you really get a feel for the difference if you live in a house with mice and a mousetrap.

Language is a finding place, not a hiding place.

I don't see myself as some kind of lone figure standing out there and doing my work in solitary splendour, but as part of the human condition and part of the continuum of writers.

unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven.

When we learn to read, it's a real product of civilization and a civilized society. It affects your brain. It affects the way you think, and it gives you that capacity for self-reflection that you simply do not have without the agency of books.

She was fragile, gentle, wide awake in a sleeping world.

I have a head for heights it's true, but no stomach for the depths. Strange then to have plumbed so many.