No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.

You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.

(and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate as politicians give out promises and whores give out)

I'm not sure if you're the person for me any more.

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.

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

And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.