There are things that can't be said, because it's hard to have to know them.

Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation in language, and someone who knows exactly how to convey her gift for sensing the meaning embedded in the most mundane act or turn of phrase.

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

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

We all know our dates of birth but . . . every year there is another date that we pass over without knowing what it is but it is just as important it is the other date the death date.

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.

All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other.