My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. “Hold tight,” I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening.

People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.

Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.

It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.

The pillow smells like the sunlight, a precious smell.

If I choose to write about sheep, it's just because I happened to write about sheep. There is no deep significance.