You have to give kids from ordinary families a ladder. You have to show them there's a way out.

I don’t think much of anything I wrote before the age of 30.

Don’t you see?” he said. “This could go on for another five years, another ten years, and then where would we be? You want to grow old waiting for something that’s never going to happen? Is that what you want?

I think that you can use up your love. I think you can blow it all on one person. You can love so much, so deeply, that there is nothing left for anyone else.

It can’t always be a honeymoon.

I think that the spirit lives on, I don’t know if it’s in heaven or if it’s somewhere else, some other place that I don’t know anything about. But it doesn’t just die. It lives on. Even if it’s only in the hearts of the people we love.

The thing about cancer is that it can always exceed your worst expectations. There is something pornographic about cancer’s ability to confound your imagination. Whatever new obscenity cancer comes up with to torment and torture you, it can always do worse tomorrow.

And it felt like every time I turned around, somebody was either dying or walking out.

The thing I care about is my weight – I’m as fanatical about it as a member of Girls Aloud. I weigh myself every morning. I know exactly what I want to be – 82kg – and I try to stick to it.

Say what you like about those starry-eyed souls, about the upheaval and destruction they always leave in their wake, but there is one thing about romantics that nobody can deny. They never settle for second best.