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

Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.

An eating disorder epidemic suggests that love and disgust are being jointly marketed, as it were; that wherever the proposition might first have come from, the unacceptability of the female body has been disseminated culturally.

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.

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

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

Having your second child, in case you were wondering, is a lot harder than having your first, except for those people who find it easier. I'm afraid I don't have the latest figures to confirm this.