To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.

No doves come from ravens’ eggs

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.

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

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

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.

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.