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

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.

Modern morality is all about perception.

A neighbor is something that belongs to the stable world of home life, the thing that lives next door to you.

My children are living, thinking human beings. It isn't in my power to regret them, for they belong to themselves.

What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer?

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