I think it's dangerous to have lots of time on your hands as a writer. Time to pursue every little alleyway, to follow every single whim. I feel I've done my best writing when I'm stretched for time, when you're most pressured.
Maggie O'FarrellI have no control, of course, over how I'm marketed. It's a sad thing, though, that so many people perceive literature to be gendered. The idea that some subjects are male and some are female is just preposterous to me. It's reductive and nonsensical, to separate writers and subjects and plots along gender lines. It's meaningless.
Maggie O'FarrellAll the time I was plowing through books on dyslexia, I found myself asking: what if, what if? What if you were a kid the 1950s with this condition, when there were no books on it, when there was no understanding of it. I remember kids in my class at school who just didn't seem to progress in their reading. There was no extra help. People just thought, "Oh, he or she isn't so bright, or they're obstinate."
Maggie O'FarrellI still have a stammer. I hate it; I loathe and despise it. But it's always there, and I have lots of ways to conceal it. I can conceal it now but I'm not good on the telephone. I get my husband to make dentist appointments. And I hate live radio. Hate it. I really try to avoid it at all costs. But it's always there. Stammerers become skilled at sentence construction and synonyms: we have to be. Faced with a problem word, we need to have instant access to eight others we could use instead - ones we could say without stumbling. I think my stammer is a huge part of my being a writer.
Maggie O'Farrell