If I believed everything everyone had ever told me about my family I'd be a sight more miserable than I am now

I first heard the story of Agnes Magnusdottir when I was an exchange student in the north of Iceland.

People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd.

I have a deep and ongoing love of Iceland, particular the landscape, and when writing Burial Rites, I was constantly trying to see whether I could distill its extraordinary and ineffable qualities into a kind of poetry.

I preferred to read than talk with the others.

...dreadful birds, dressed in red with breasts of silver buttons, and cocked heads and sharp mouths, looking for guilt like berries on a bush.

Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened.

It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself.

When did a smile ever get anyone into trouble?

The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe.

I've been half-frozen for so long, it is as though the winter has set up home in my marrow.

So lonely I make friends with the ravens that prey on lambs.

In Iceland, you can see the contours of the mountains wherever you go, and the swell of the hills, and always beyond that the horizon. And theres this strange thing: youre never sort of hidden you always feel exposed in that landscape. But it makes it very beautiful as well.