Modern morality is all about perception.

The distinctive feature of my family was intolerance of sensitivity and emotion - everything's great, it all has to be great all the time and why do you have to spoil it? Whereas probably the most fundamental and important thing to me has been defending my right to tell the truth about how I feel.

I remain fascinated by where you go as a woman once you are a mother, and if you ever come back.

There is always shame in the creation of an expressive work, whether it's a book or a clay pot. Every artist worries about how they will be seen by others through their work. When you create, you aspire to do justice to yourself, to remake yourself, and there is always the fear that you will expose the very thing that you hoped to transform.

Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

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.

There are certain types of slightly hysterical human characters who, rather than creating, walk around with a sense of their own potential - it's as if they themselves were art objects. They feel as if their lives are written narratives, or pieces of music.