[He] didn’t like to think of himself as vain, but there were definitely times when he wished there was someone on hand to take his photograph.

This might sound really foolish, but when I came to Edinburgh in 1988 I had spent nearly all my life living south of Bristol, and I was just amazed that a city like Edinburgh was actually in the British isles.

Work hard at . . . something.

The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her.

What must that be like? To be admired before you’ve even said a word, to be desired two or three hundred times a day by people who have absolutely no idea what you’re like?

If there's anything I'm keen to get better at in my writing, then it's the writing of prose as opposed to the writing of dialogue.

This is me.’" He handed her the precious scrap of paper. ‘Call me or I’ll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it’s not a competition. You don’t lose if you phone first