"I see happiness as a slightly spiky emotion, a stab of pleasure, a pinnacle, a punctuation mark, rather than a continuous state to be inhabited like contentment. (Contentment can feel slightly stodgy and claustrophobic, as though it permanently wears a cummerbund.) I love happiness when it descends, when it is earned following great periods of exertion, but I like other feelings just as much, I think. Grief and worry, let's not forget, can make you feel more alive and engaged, producing a spur to heroism and a sheer and sharp outlook that turns the color and the brightness of things up to their highest settings."
Her latest novel:
