If love is what is held to make us immortal, hatred is the reverse.

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

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.

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.

Feminism remains something that needs to be explained to people.

Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.

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