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

I don't go to church any more, but I think that Catholicism is rather like the brand they use on cattle: I feel so formed in that Catholic mould that I don't think I could adopt any other form of spirituality. I still get feelings of consolation about churches.

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

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

For me, a novel is always the result of my attempt to impose myself on raw circumstances. It is a concrete form of lived experience.

The writing you allude to is a form of dissent, but it's also expressive of the need to evolve beyond what is turgid and stale in contemporary fiction.