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

Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself - and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good - but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath.

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.

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

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

We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.

What I increasingly felt, in marriage and in motherhood, was that to live as a woman and to live as a feminist were two different and possibly irreconcilable things.