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

As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.

Having your second child, in case you were wondering, is a lot harder than having your first, except for those people who find it easier. I'm afraid I don't have the latest figures to confirm this.

I don't really believe in stories, only in the people who tell them.

You could time a suburban story by your watch: it lasts as long as it takes a small furry animal that's lonely to find friends, or a small furry animal that's lost to find its parents; it lasts as long as a quick avowal of love; it lasts precisely as long as the average parent is disposed on a Tuesday night to spend reading aloud to children.

Christianity has kept itself going for centuries on hope alone, and has perpetrated all manner of naughtiness in the meantime.

My children are living, thinking human beings. It isn't in my power to regret them, for they belong to themselves.