You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages.

I remember so clearly, in the early days, if I had to do a piece of press, they'd phone for me and say, 'Oh, we're going to bring hair and makeup, it'll take about five hours.' And I said, 'Well, if it was Ian McEwan, would it take about five hours? Would there be hair and makeup? Cause if that's not the case, then don't bring the hair and makeup.' So, it's fascinating that they just assume: it's a young woman, she must want to be photographed for five hours. She must have nothing better to do than delight in trying on all your shoes. But it's not the case.

He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.

Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.

I have a natural tendency to feel well about the world, I suppose, one way or another. But then there is the problem of pain. There are things like [Abraham] Lincoln's beloved little boy dying.