Lists Are A Form Of Power.

I Grew Up With That Completely Fictive Idea Of Motherhood, Where The Mother Never Strayed From The Kitchen. All The Women In My Books Are Very Afraid That If They Do Anything With Their Minds They Won't Be Complete Women. I Don't Think My Daughters' Generation Has That Feeling.

Don't You Find It Rather Heavy, To Have Everything Really In Front Of You – All The People Who Are Going To Matter, Whom You Haven't Met Yet, All The Choices You Are Going To Have To Make, Everything You Might Achieve, And All The Possible Failures – Unreal Now? The Future Flaps Round My Head Like A Cloud Of Midges.

Books That Change You, Even Later In Life, Give You A Kind Of Electrical Shock As The World Takes A Different Shape.

I'd Like To Write The Way Matisse Paints.

I Acquired A Hunger For Fairy Tales In The Dark Days Of Blackout And Blitz In The Second World War.