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

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

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.

I have absolutely no concept of work, except for university. But I like to talk to people a lot about their jobs.

I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.

I think a lot of artists no longer want to participate in or be associated with narrative because of its corruptedness in contemporary culture.

I was aware, in those early days of motherhood, that my behaviour was strange to the people who knew me well. It was as though I had been brainwashed, taken over by a cult religion. And yet this cult, motherhood, was not a place where I could actually live. Like any cult, it demanded a complete surrender of identity to belong to it.