It's true that I wouldn't have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going.

My sister lives in New York and she was struck by how class-ridden the reviews were. Everyone had to mention that I'm posh. British people are obsessed by that…

The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer.

While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-def…

Cold on Canadian hills or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling w…

No I would not give you false hope On this strange and mournful day But the mother and child reunion Is only a motion away, Oh, little darling of mine I can't …

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.…