Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.

I'm just interested in women's friendships generally. It always seems to me, and this is just my pet theory, that women are kind of at the sharp end of capitalism one way or another. Mainly because they buy everything. In a practical sense, women buy most things. They're always comparing - to friends, to famous people, to other people. An obsessive act of comparison.

I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.

It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.

Full stories are as rare as honesty.

Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own.

I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.