For his thirtieth birthday he had filled a whole night-club off Regent Street; people had been queuing on the pavement to get in. The SIM card of his mobile phone in his pocket was overflowing with telephone numbers of all the hundreds of people he had met in the last ten years, and yet the only person he had ever wanted to talk to in all that time was standing now in the very next room.

Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you

Be good. Do something good.

Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.

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.

At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction.

[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.