There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.

She pressed her hand against her chest. No heart. So where did the love she felt come from?

He longed for the deep as she longed for the night sky and for white lilies floating on water -- although she still tried to convince herself that love alone could feed her soul.

Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.

Quite suddenly Meggie felt fear rise in her like black brackish water, she felt lost, terribly lost, she felt it in every part of her. She didn't belong here! What had she done?

Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.

And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it.