People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

The British have always made terrible parents.

Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.

As it stands, motherhood is a sort of wilderness through which each woman hacks her way, part martyr, part pioneer; a turn of events from which some women derive feelings of heroism, while others experience a sense of exile from the world they knew.

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.

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what you want, I think English rural communities offer quite a lot of material.