Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad.

Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.

I always remind myself that [ Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Simone] de Beauvoir didn't have children. And when you don't have children, it might be easier to believe that the child doesn't come with something.

When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.

Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.