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 preferred to read than talk with the others.

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.

No doves come from ravens’ eggs

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

The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe.

If I believed everything everyone had ever told me about my family I'd be a sight more miserable than I am now