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.

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

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

If love is what is held to make us immortal, hatred is the reverse.

Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude.

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

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