Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you.

Don’t you see?” I said. “He could change every detail, but he couldn’t change her.” “But why?” His obtuseness frustrated me. “Because he was in love with her!” I said. “Because, to him, she was the only thing that was real.

Sometimes I forget that the world is not on the same schedule as I. That everything is not dying, or that if it is dying it will return to life, what with a little sun and the usual encouragement.

It's one of those unforgettable moments that happen as a child, when you discover that all along the world has been betraying you.

I take almost no notes when I write. I have one notebook - this old green leather notebook that my dad gave me a decade ago.

We move through the day like two hands of a clock: sometimes we overlap for a moment, then come apart again, carrying on alone. Everyday exactly the same: the tea, the burnt toast, the crumbs, the silence.

When the word 'nostalgia' was coined in the 18th century, it was used to describe a pathology - not so much a sense of lost time, but a severe homesickness.