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

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

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.

Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers

I never start with what lots of people think of as a subject or a theme. They're school words, not art words. So, writing essays busts my arse because the art is in addressing the subject. I find it really difficult and monstrously time-consuming. In an essay I need to employ my imagination but it's indentured in a way it's not when I'm free to make everything up.

Surfing is one of the most joyful pursuits a human can take up. But there's no joy in a deadzone. If you've ever surfed in turds and medical waste you don't want to repeat the experience.

And the sun on the wall of her room, the block of sun with all the tiny flying things in it. When she was little she thought they were the souls of dead insects, still buzzing in the light.