How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are?

Their throats were bare for God.

I drove to Oxford with my van full of petrol and tin cans, as I didn't know there were service stations on the motorway. I pulled up on the hard shoulder and got my cans out. Then I filled up and set off again. That's how naive I was - so much not a cosmopolitan girl.

You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved.

Writing is both bomb and bomb disposal-a necessary shattering of cliche and assumption, and a powerful defusing of the soul-destroying messages of modern life (that nothing matters, nothing changes, money is everything, etc). Writing is a state of being as well as an act of doing.

I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.

I keep myself locked as a box when it matters, and broken open when it doesn't matter at all.