When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense.

I have never got a grip on when the past begins or where it ends, but if cities map the past with statues made from bronze forever frozen in one dignified position, as much as I try to make the past keep still and mind its manners, it moves and murmurs with me through every day.

To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL.

She was not a poet. She was a poem.

Be sure to enjoy language, experiment with ways of talking, be exuberant even when you don't feel like it because language can make your world a better place to live.

When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense.

I realised that the question I had asked myself while writing this book [Swimming Home] was (as surgeons say) very close to the bone: 'What do we do with knowledge that we cannot bear to live with? What do we do with the things we do not want to know?'