Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.

Learning another language is like becoming another person.

My imagination is a kind of animal. So what I do is keep it alive.

One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.

I was confident that I was a special person. But time slowly chips away at life. People don't just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside. And finally the day comes when you have to settle accounts. Nobody can escape it. People have to pay the price for what they've received. I have only just learned that truth.

Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.

I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time. But it's not like that. It happens overnight.