Divorce also entails the beginning of a supposition that that familial reality might have obstructed one's ability to perceive others.

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.

I'm a novelist, not a social scientist or a commentator.

I absolutely don't dislike children - I would choose their company over adult company any time.

I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest. It was an impulse I knew well, and I had learned that it was not the summons from a larger world I used to believe it to be. It was simply a desire to escape from what I had.

The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be "taught" - is disturbing.

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