Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

It's a pretty brutal process, having a baby.

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

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

The anorexic body is held in the grip of will alone; its meaning is far from stable. What it says - 'Notice me, feed me, mother me' - is not what it means, for such attentions constitute an agonising test of that will, and also threaten to return the body to the dreaded 'normality' it has been such ecstasy to escape.

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

It is living, not thinking, as a feminist that has become the challenge.