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.

I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this.

And it was at moments like this that she had to remind herself that she was in love with him, or had once been in love with him, a long time ago.

All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.

[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.

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph.

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.