I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see.

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.

I was aware, in those early days of motherhood, that my behaviour was strange to the people who knew me well. It was as though I had been brainwashed, taken over by a cult religion. And yet this cult, motherhood, was not a place where I could actually live. Like any cult, it demanded a complete surrender of identity to belong to it.

The true self seeks release, not constraint. It doesnt want to be corseted in a sonnet or made to learn a system of musical notations. It wants liberation, which is why very often it fastens on the novel, for the novel seems spacious, undefined, free.

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

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

A feminist man is a bit like a vegetarian: it's the humanitarian principle he's defending, I suppose.