Having your second child, in case you were wondering, is a lot harder than having your first, except for those people who find it easier. I'm afraid I don't have the latest figures to confirm this.

Parenthood, like death, is an event for which it is nearly impossible to be prepared. It brings you into a new relationship with the fact of your own existence, a relationship in which one may be rendered helpless.

I absolutely don't dislike children - I would choose their company over adult company any time.

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

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

As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.

A feminist man is a bit like a vegetarian: it's the humanitarian principle he's defending, I suppose.