When I got up again, I'd shed the only part of me that had ever thought I'd find words for even the smallest bit of life. - Nicole Krauss

Even after the only person whose opinion I cared about left on a boat for America, I continued to fill pages with her name.

All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.

My mother is English, and as she was the one who read to us, my early world was A .A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. None of them thought it necessary to protect children from darkness. On the contrary, they guided their readers right toward it. This gives one an enormous sense of being respected as a child. Not just of being trusted to handle things as they are, but to be accepted as not entirely good. To be recognized as having darkness within oneself, too. I don’t think I’ve trusted any author since who doesn’t address me with that assumption.