It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself.

I don't want to be remembered, I want to be here!

As though prayer could simply pluck sin out. But any woman knows that a thread, once woven, is fixed in place; the only way to smooth a mistake is to let it all unravel.

In Iceland, you can see the contours of the mountains wherever you go, and the swell of the hills, and always beyond that the horizon. And theres this strange thing: youre never sort of hidden; you always feel exposed in that landscape. But it makes it very beautiful as well.

...dreadful birds, dressed in red with breasts of silver buttons, and cocked heads and sharp mouths, looking for guilt like berries on a bush.

Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened.

It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself.