The desert is a spiritual place, we vaguely understand, and the sea the mere playground of our hedonism.

Different tenses and perspectives offer you different things. It helps to distinguish the world that they are in.

I went to school for 12 years, and uni for four, but I learnt more about human existence in the 30 hours it took my first child to be born than I did in all those years of study.

It's dark already and I'm out here again, talking, telling the story to the quiet night.

Past tense offers authority, distance, and present tense offers emotional immediacy.

When I was a girl I had this strong feeling that I didn't belong anywhere,... It was in my head, what I thought and dreamt, what I believed..., that's where I belonged, that was my country.

It is hard for me to speak of themes. I like the reader to do that. Otherwise it feels like writing a 3rd grade essay on someone else's work.