I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.

Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?

Love is vivid. I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version. I never shied away from love's hugeness but I had no idea that love could be as reliable as the sun. The daily rising of love.

I realised something important: whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.

That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.

I can't do it. I've been here before and it's not a room with a view. The only power I have is the negative power of withdrawal. If I don't withdraw I have no power at all. A relationship where one person has no power or negative power, isn't a relationship, it's the bond between master and slave.