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

I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.

London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.

Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.

Librarians and romance writers accomplish one mission better than anyone, including English teachers: we create readers for life - and what could be more fulfilling than that?

I think just knowing you're married and having that in the back of your mind all the time - it sounds official, but it doesn't really feel any different. We don't do anything differently than we did before.

It seemed romantic but also tragic - people would be winning but then lose it all, or crash but fight on, break bones but get back on their bikes and try to finish. Just getting to the end was seen as an achievement in itself.

If somebody says, 'I am a gay person, and I want to get married,' is their own family going to deny them that? Are our own fellow citizens going to deny them that?