I preferred to read than talk with the others.

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

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.

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.

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.