Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.

I'm a novelist, not a social scientist or a commentator.

A creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they have in common - the desire to write - could almost be considered meaningless.

Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

The anorexic body is held in the grip of will alone; its meaning is far from stable. What it says - 'Notice me, feed me, mother me' - is not what it means, for such attentions constitute an agonising test of that will, and also threaten to return the body to the dreaded 'normality' it has been such ecstasy to escape.

Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude.