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….

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….

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.….

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..

Spending a lot of time away from home was strange. My parents visited me, obviously, but I was in hospital a lot, alone. And then when my health had ….

The Chilean novelist Isabel Allende says there's no such thing as writer's block, you just need to live a bit more. I try to bear that in mind..

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

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….

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

I always had the urge to write. Not in the sense of wanting to be a writer, but just writing things down, getting words on a page. Graphomania, it's ….

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….

Despite being from Ireland, I've always avoided writing about it, for two reasons. For a very small country, Ireland has produced an astonishing numb….

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

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….

The key thing in my becoming a writer was going on a Arvon Foundation residential writing course. I took with me a really messy twenty thousand words….

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 ….

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 ….