I rarely get a moment to myself, but I love the way that my agenda is dictated by the children, not my work.

You know how if you're born in a certain situation you always expect your life to run on a steady trajectory? I've never really had a sense of that. I assume that life is going to go up and down.

I rarely get a moment to myself, but I love the way that my agenda is dictated by the children, not my work.

Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Everyday of my life I have prepared for success, worked for it, waited for it, and you don't notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime is finished. Then it hits you--the thing you have been waiting for has already gone by. And it was going in the other direction. It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full." p. 265

People always want to identify a writer with their protagonist.

I started writing 'Brick Lane' when my children were two years and five months old. We were on holiday in the north of England when I was overtaken by a compulsion to start writing.

The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.