David Mitchell

As long as our civilisation keeps trundling along generally forwards, then there is the possibility of a future where ethnicity is merely an interesting badge, not a uniform you can't take off.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No. 2. Power, I reckon, would be where oxygen is.

It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.

I've always been very determined, ever since I was a little girl, to make my way.

But I'm a rock 'n' roll singer; that's my livelihood, my occupation.