The British have always made terrible parents.

I am a good and interested mother - which has surprised me.

It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiasticall y they drive you to your own destruction.

An eating disorder epidemic suggests that love and disgust are being jointly marketed, as it were; that wherever the proposition might first have come from, the unacceptability of the female body has been disseminated culturally.

The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be "taught" - is disturbing.

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

I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see.