I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.

The city was bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants too. It had its own nuances. It accepted whatever came its way, the crime and the violence and the little shocks of good that crawled out from underneath the everyday.

Part of me really wants to believe that hope is entirely available to all of us. We don't have to embrace it. It would be sentimental and silly to say that we all need it, but it is absolutely available to all of us.

He didn't like it all that much when he first came - all the rubbish and the rush - but it was growing on him, it wasn't half bad. Coming to the city was like entering a tunnel, he said, and finding to your surprise that the light at the end didn't matter; sometimes in fact the tunnel made the light tolerable.

He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.

If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.