I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.

Working-class families in the north of England used to hear the 1611 Bible regularly at church and at home ... for us, the language didn't seem too difficult. I especially liked 'the quick and the dead' - you really get a feel for the difference if you live in a house with mice and a mousetrap.

You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?

Shuttered like a fan no-one suspects your shoulder blades of wings.

To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.