The Island of Missing Trees: A Novel

Arriving there is what you are destined for, But do not hurry the journey at all …

‘People from troubled islands can never be normal. We can pretend, we can even make amazing progress – but we can never really learn to feel safe. The ground that feels rock hard to others is choppy waters for our kind.’

For wisdom, try a beech; for intelligence, a pine; for bravery, a rowan; for generosity, a hazel; for joy, a juniper; and for when you need to learn to let go of what you cannot control, a birch with its white-silver bark, peeling and shedding layers like old skins.

The cycle of belonging and exile.

Parents, especially those as distracted as her father, desperately needed things to run smoothly and were so inclined to believe the system they had created was working fine that they assumed a normality even when surrounded by clues to the contrary.

Today, I think of fanaticism – of any type – as a viral disease. Creeping in menacingly, ticking like a pendulum clock that never winds down, it takes hold of you faster when you are part of an enclosed, homogenous unit. Better to keep some distance from all collective beliefs and certainties, I always remind myself.

the repetitions and rhythms that suffocated him little by little, but never fast enough.

because that is what nature did to death, it transformed abrupt endings into a thousand new beginnings.

where what mattered was not the final destination but to be on the move, searching, changing, becoming.