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.

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.

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.

He died alone because he was too embarrassed to phone anyone.

Alone in my room, wrapped in a blanket, I whimpered and talked aloud to myself, recalling the lost glory of my youth when I considered myself, and was considered by others, a bright and capable person. It seemed that was all gone now.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

...The plural of elf is elves! What a language! What a world!