I don't want a tombstone. You could carve on it 'She never actually wanted a tombstone.'

It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don't know.

My father is from Newark in Nottinghamshire and my mother is from the very north of Ireland. They've ended up in Scotland, where my father - well, both of them - will always be seen as having come from somewhere else.

Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.

I want to be bored. But I can't. But I really don't want to be this thing that I'm having to be instead of being bored.

I went to the top of Vesuvius and looked in.

Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.