“It’s better to think of my life like that— part miracle, part madness. It’s better if I accept that I can’t control any of the things that matter. My life is a trail of shipwrecks and set-sails. There are no arrivals, no destinations; there are only sandbanks and shipwreck; then another boat, another tide.”

“Unmoor the boat, we could go…downriver...History is a collection of found objects washed up through time. Goods, ideas, personalities surface towards us and then sink away and some we hook out and others we ignore. And as the pattern changes so does the meaning. We cannot rely on the facts. Time that returns everything, changes everything. ..a bundle of abandoned clothes. The end of one identity and the beginning of another. …History is a madman's museum. I think I understand some of this, But it’s all subject to the tide. Unmoor the boat. Part miracle part madness. My life is a series of set sails and shipwrecks. I run aground I cut loose, the rim is dangerously near the waterline. I feel like a saint in a coracle. Head thrown back, sun on my throat. Unmoor the boat.”

“Writing isn’t my life…it’s a lovely part of my life... but it’s not my life. My life is family, friends, fishing, food…things like reading and painting and all the rest of it, and you can’t really prioritize when you’re involved with family or you’re involved in fishing, you can’t say, ‘Oh, I really should be writing.”

“It’s better to end something and start another than to imprison yourself in hoping for the impossible. Life can never promise to always be happy but life gets better after you accept things you just can’t change. For you Jelle, from me.. with luv. He-he!”

“Food’s my only bag. It’s my gig, my art, my life. Always has been, always will be. I’m always battling myself – the part of me that says I can and the part of me that says I can’t. My greatest gift has been that the part of me that says “I can’t” is always, always just a little bit louder.”

“Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)”