I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?

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

Monarchists frequently declare that without the royal family, Britain would be 'nothing.' What a woeful lack of love for one's country such statements express.

Being a monarchist - saying that one small group is born more worthy of respect than another - is just as warped and strange as being a racist.

If you want sex, have an affair. If you want a relationship, buy a dog.

Feminism seeks to turn the biggest, bloodiest carnivore in the world - passion - into a right-on cud-chewing vegan. It can never work. Sex was never meant to be that way. Sex, on the whole, was meant to be short, nasty and brutish. If what you want is cuddling, you should buy a puppy.

Rachel Cusk's books are like pop-up volumes for grown-ups, the prose springing out of the page to bop you neatly between the eyes with its insights.