People - and I include myself - get fat because they choose pleasure over self-denial.

I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. I'm a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist.

Some say that Cusk has no sense of humour, but expecting giggles from this writer would be akin to expecting sonnets from Benny Hill.

There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.

I feel even less patience with transsexuals.

Having 'best friends' is - at least for me - as outdated and small-minded a concept as the idea of 'Sunday best clothes.'