The role you've been ascribed in childhood can twist or break apart or seem outgrown, especially when you have your own family and begin to see your ….

We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our ow….

I have two sisters, and I think siblings are always going to be irresistible for novelists. They have been throughout time and they'll continue to be..

She liked the way his smile took a long time to arrive and just as long to leave..

We always planned to move back to the Republic but it never happened, I'm not sure why. My dad is one of those immigrants who never leaves the place ….

You learn so much with each book, but it's what you teach yourself by writing your own books and by reading good books written by other people - that….

I think it was Rose Macaulay who said, "A house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.".

As you'll know yourself, there are these moments when you're writing a book when one remark or moment will pull everything together and you'll think,….

Gretta sits herself down at the table. Robert has arranged everything she needs: a plate, a knife, a bowl with a spoon, a pat of butter, a jar of jam….

Always, at the end of every book, there are things you will be unsatisfied with, and still more things that later on you will realize were not right.….

Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the ….

I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in cushioning your insecurities with a system of belief that tells you 'Don't worry. This may be your life b….

She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become insubstantial in the face of the….

Two and a half thousand left-handed people are killed every year using things made for right-handed people..

What are you supposed to do with all the love you have for somebody if that person is no longer there? What happens to all that leftover love? Do you….

Motherhood is all-encompassing, and in a way, as the mother, you're the star of the household..

Why isn't life better designed so it warns you when terrible things are about to happen?.

As other authors have realized, heat can have a strange effect on us, can cause odd chemical reactions in the brain. Heat can bring out secrets; it c….

For a while I used to listen to those whispers about babies costing you books, and Cyril Connolly's loathsome quote that "There is no more somber ene….

I think it's dangerous to have lots of time on your hands as a writer. Time to pursue every little alleyway, to follow every single whim. I feel I've….

It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn't think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realiz….