When I was growing up, I was lucky to benefit from a first class education.

My pledge to you is that the SNP will put women and gender equality right at the heart of the Westminster agenda.

True gender equality in Scotland - and elsewhere - is still some way off.

I'm manifestly not the same as Alex Salmond. I'm a different gender, for example... I'm being flippant, but maybe this is a partly gender-driven difference: I'm very keen that we find a way of reaching out across party divides to find things we agree on, as well as the things we disagree on.

My mother thought me being gay was a death sentence.

The appeal of cinema lies in the fear of death.

I loved and protected my own children like a fierce mama bear, but one of them died anyway. It was a dark day when I realized that part of my responsibility in Casey's death was that I did not love all the children of the world in that same real, not abstract, way.

My first job out of law school was representing people on death row in North Carolina, where I often saw the impact of hasty prosecutions.