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

I remain fascinated by where you go as a woman once you are a mother, and if you ever come back.

I have absolutely no concept of work, except for university. But I like to talk to people a lot about their jobs.

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.

Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.

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

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.