If we’re not loyal to the things we love, what’s the point? That’s like not having a memory. That’s when we stop being human.

Of all the animals that travelled the long road through the ages with us, dogs always walked closest.

Remembering dreams is like picking up small jellyfish – they slip through your fingers – and you never know if it’s a dream you had or if you added to the dream in the remembering. Sometimes it’s hard to know if you’re remembering a dream at all, or just a dream about remembering a dream. And if that doesn’t make sense, well, neither do dreams.

Books turn out to be pretty durable if they’re kept away from damp and rats. They can last hundreds of years, easy. Reading is another way we survive. It helps to know where we came from, how we got here. And most of all, for me, even thought these low and empty islands are all I have ever known, when I open the front cover of a new book, it’s like a door, and I can travel far away in place and time.

I didn’t know what to do next. Doing something is always the best way to think.

No one’s the monster in their own story. Monsters are just a matter of perspective.

Never trust someone who tells good stories, not until you know why they’re doing it.

Dogs were with us from the very beginning. And of all the animals that walked the long centuries beside us, they always walked the closest.

I say she was a lady because a lady is a fancier kind of woman, and the dress was as fancy as you could imagine, long and luxurious and the liveliest yellow with black bits on the edges. It wasn’t a dress you could have done anything useful in. It was a dress made to get in the way. It was, however, a very good dress for lounging in and looking at people. And her eyes were doing a very intense job of looking.

Even the wide sea and the open sky can be claustrophobic if you never get away from them.