When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.

My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour - calm, quiet and introspective - did something to soothe my shattered self.

First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.

If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go! - do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've just evicted would sputter, With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel.

Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.

I felt I was beating a rainbow to death