I always wanted to be a writer! But I wanted to do other things, too - be a psychologist, a librarian, et cetera. Now I've decided that reading fiction that features characters who are in those professions will do.

I don't have a style. I just try to write what the story demands.

Fairy tales, because they have a very clear structure, are easier to interfere with. Also they have this really weird logic: the kind of logic that you only really experience when you're not feeling very well, or as a child.

In Egypt, like everywhere, the land is made to fit the sky; but here it is more so. Here it is possible to say, “This is land,” and point, and “This is sky,” and point, but the eyes can’t discover the dividing line.

I miss her. So much that sometimes I’m scared I’ll bring her back.

His puppets have a nihilistic spirit, if you’d understand what I meant by that. Sometimes his puppets won’t perform at all. He just lets them sit there, watching us. Then he has them look at each other and then back at us until it feels as if they have information, some kind of dreadful information about each and every one of us, and you begin to wish they’d decide to keep their mouths shut forever.

I’d have liked for him to say my name again, though. You know how it is when someone says your name really well, like it means something that makes the world a better place.

I remember Mum repeatedly telling us we had good hearts and good brains. When she said that we’d say ‘thanks’ and it might have sounded as if we were thanking her for seeing us that way but actually we were thanking her for giving us whatever goodness was in us.

It was like dancing with a mask that was attached to a stick – she dared not lower it, no matter how tiring it was to hold the mask up. She was the ugly girl at the ball.

A rustle handle turning, or a wooden door forced open until its hinges buckle, or to me, to me it was the sound of something growing. I sometimes imagine that if we could hear trees growing we’d hear them... creak... like that.