I Don't Want A Tombstone. You Could

My Father Is From Newark In Nottinghamshire And My Mother Is From The Very North Of Ireland. They've Ended Up In Scotland, Where My Father - Well, Both Of Them - Will Always Be Seen As Having Come From Somewhere Else.

And It Was Always The Stories That Needed The Telling That Gave Us The Rope We Could Cross Any River With. They Balanced Us High Above Any Crevasse. They Made Us Be Natural Acrobats. They Made Us Brave. They Met Us Well. They Changed Us. It Was In Their Nature To.

All We Need To Do, Reader Or Writer, From First Line To Final Page, Is Be As Open As A Book, And Be Alive To The Life In Language - On All Its Levels.

Outside The Leaves On The Trees Constricted Slightly; They Were The Deep Done Green Of The Beginning Of Autumn. It Was A Sunday In September. There Would Only Be Four. The Clouds Were High And The Swallows Would Be Here For Another Month Or So Before They Left For The South Before They Returned Again Next Summer.

You Never Know If You're A Writer. You Can't Trust It. If You Woke Up And Said, "i'm A Writer," It Would Be Gone. You Wouldn't See Anything For Miles - Even The Dust Would Be Running Away.