Julia Green

“I don't believe in the white spectre-type of ghosts you get in stories, but what if ghosts are something else? Like memories somehow caught and trapped in time, released by being in certain places where things first happened.”

“But you still need the two: the dark and the light. You can't see one without the other.”

“What i realise now is that the story actually did have a happy ending: the children came back. In spite of everything the adults did to them, the children found their own way home, their pockets full of precious stones and pearls that gleamed and shone in the light.”

“Memories come back, pressing in on you, like ghost faces in the darkness pushing up the glass, trying to get into the lit room.”

“There is always that choice, the light or the dark”

“There are lots of different ways grown-ups disappear. It's lonely being the one left behind.”

“Change & transformation. That kind of magic.”

“That's what memory is like: layers, one overlapping another, and compacting down the way old leaves slowly crumble and turn to a rich peaty soil, nourishing the new things that will grow. It's why it's important, remembering things. It's why it matters, when the memories aren't there, and no one fills in the gaps for you.”