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.

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.

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

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

Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative.

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

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.