There should be a democracy of voices in literature. There are people who live with a kind of striving and with a certain kind of tenderness - it's not an unusual thing - and maybe that's not written about enough.

I've said this before - and I mean it strongly - an abstract concept or a moral issue has to be connected to feeling. If we don't believe it somehow viscerally, we don't really take it in.

I'm not being naive; I realise there's no such thing as a pure reading. But I'd rather keep myself as far out of it as I can.

I have a profound resistance to the idea that a reader could say, 'Oh, well, that's her story.' We should all be interested, no matter where we come from, or who our parents are. It's not my province; it's ours. These questions concern us all.