I realize that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.

There was nothing in this world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.

My earliest memory is aged three, seeing sunlight on water and feeling it was really magical.

We had loved people we really shouldn't have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves, or we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.

When I was very little, I probably wanted to be more normal. I probably wanted the Laura Ashley bedroom, and instead I got thrift-store everything.

When you're not doing fiction, there's a limit to how much illustrating you can do with your work. I mean, you can do fine. There are great non-fiction writers, but people aren't necessarily going to say anything that reveals them as much as a picture might. Even their surroundings, in lot of cases, the things that meant the most to me were the things I noticed in their houses. I was always looking, as much as I was listening to them. I was looking around for clues as to why I was there.

But, like ivy, we grow where there is room for us.