There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in evrything, everywhere we look.

But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style. And style is integral to a work. How something is told correlates with - more - makes what's being told. A story is its style.

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

remember you must live. remember you most love. remainder you mist leaf.

I was at the tail end of the family. The next brother along was already seven years older than me. I remember growing up by myself, playing games by myself.

What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong. I don't know, Brooksie, he said, I don't remember. That was unimaginable, not remembering where a book has come from! and where it was bought from! That was part of the whole history, the whole point, of any book that you owned! And when you picked it up later in the house at home, you knew, you just knew by looking and having it in your hand, where it came from and where you got it and when and why you'd decided to buy it.

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.