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I have been tossing around the idea of writing some non-fiction. Maybe a collection of short stories about my experience being a mom and how not to be perfect.

It's no wonder the narcissistic mother will always have a place in literature: she's a freak of nature.

I'm a mother myself, and sometimes mothers get a bad rap just because they've tried to do their job. Some people have more of a knack for it than others do, but almost all of it falls to, 'My mother's suffocating me.' Whatever.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

When anyone plays a mother on film, there is a whole raft of judgment in that a mother is a particular archetype or that every mother is the same. That's complete rubbish.

My mother was terribly invasive, all in the name of psychiatric honesty. It was a bad thing in some ways, but I do think it had the effect of making me interested in 'the truth' as a writer - more than beauty, more than having a shapely story.

Mothers are great. They outlast everything. But when they're bad, they're the worst thing that can happen.

All I am is a writer and a mom.

There is a saying: 'The child is parent to the adult', which means whatever happens to you as a child or teenager affects the adult you become. You are forged in your history. And fiction is an incredibly important force in shaping children, and that's why fiction needs to be diverse.

I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.