A sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal.

Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what you want, I think English rural communities offer quite a lot of material.

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

Feminism remains something that needs to be explained to people.

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

I am a good and interested mother - which has surprised me.

What I increasingly felt, in marriage and in motherhood, was that to live as a woman and to live as a feminist were two different and possibly irreconcilable things.