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

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.

Oh. To be filled with goodness then shattered by goodness, so beautifully mosaically fragmented by such shocking goodness.

And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.

We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.

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.

To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.