Feminism remains something that needs to be explained to people.

That's writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn't turn up.

The British have always made terrible parents.

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

The 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good.

It is living, not thinking, as a feminist that has become the challenge.

The reaction to 'Aftermath' has been far worse than to 'A Life's Work,' yet I find I'm perhaps a little less touched by it. In both cases, I've coped artistically by believing the criticisms weren't right. They upset me, but they didn't challenge my understanding of how to write, nor of how morality functions in literature.