If I know somebody is coming 'round, it is incredibly difficult for me to work because I'm waiting for this interruption - even the children's comings and goings are interruptions. Cake-making is a good way of coming out of that space.

I'm getting some really good work. And because I'm delivering what they want, more good work is coming my way.

I'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying.

I started when I was in college because I was shy and thought it would be a good way to break out of that.

The 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good.

The old world of England was picturesque and safe in a way that L.A. wasn't, but it was so amazingly socially cruel. I had never experienced that in America - never in school, nowhere.