What you risk reveals what you value.

I think of myself in a continuum as a woman. Two hundred years ago, it would have been very difficult for me to write at all.

To create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement.

The key to happiness, she said, is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.' `What if those who do not do as you do are gunning you down?' I said.... Alaska frowned. `Guns are intolerant. Guns are a failure of communication.

Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

Explore me' you said and I collected my ropes, flasks and maps, expecting to be back home soon. I dropped into the mass of you and I cannot find the way out. Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.

Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.