I'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying.

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

To become a mother is to learn a whole language - to relearn it, perhaps, as it was the tongue to which we were born - and hence gain entrance to a forgotten world of comprehension.

Writing, more than any other art, is indexed to the worthiness of the self because it is identified in peoples minds with emotion.

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.

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

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.