There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky. That's what I want now, and I think it's what you should want too. But it will be too late soon. We'll become too set to change. If we don't take our chance now, another may never come for either of us.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you're going to write before you die.

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help.

Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.

Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing.