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

Cruel birds, ravens, but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness.

I first heard the story of Agnes Magnusdottir when I was an exchange student in the north of Iceland.

I have a deep and ongoing love of Iceland, particular the landscape, and when writing Burial Rites, I was constantly trying to see whether I could distill its extraordinary and ineffable qualities into a kind of poetry.

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.

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.