I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home

You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.

He saw things in a way that others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face.

Although I always said that I wanted to be a writer from childhood, I hadn't actually done much about it until I came to London.

As I get older, I use less jewelry - necklace or earrings each morning, not both; my clothes are getting more basic - fewer colours and simpler cuts; and my make-up is stripped back to basics.

Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.

That's how fossil hunting is: It takes over, like a hunger, and nothing else matters but what you find. And even when you find it, you still start looking again the next minute, because there might be something even better waiting.