In America I think it's much more full of disruption culturally; it's much more mysterious how we inherit culture here. We grab it where we can find it - we're insatiable - and there can be a sense here that it's not available to you as readily as it is in other cultures.

It's a privilege to have kids and not live your life in solitude. But we live in a child-hating culture.

Attachment parenting is this theory that if you wear your baby around and you sleep with your baby and you breast-feed for a long time, the baby will be more attached to you.

I see, in women friends, a really dangerous phenomenon where it seems they reach a certain age and become invisible.

Sitting down with younger women writers and saying, "This is what I do and you can do this" is hugely important.

We all exist in relation to the world, our partners, the human race.

I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.