The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.

Near the point of impact, time acelerates to the speed of light.

It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.

Is there any mystery like who you finally turn out to be.

It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'--and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.

My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.

Ideas brush past fleeting and insubstantial as moths. But I let them go, I don't want them. What I want is a voice.