Monique Roffey

Trinidadians love speaking their own English; it's full of poetic forms and can be playful and lyrical and comical. Trinidadians are verbal acrobats, and I love being on the island just to hear the people speak.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle' is a love story mapped onto an unfolding political tragedy: that of the failure of the Independence era in Trinidad.

The romantic idealism of my youth has been replaced with realism and hard work at what I love.

The person I love most is the Dalai Lama. China destroyed his country, yet he says that it's imperative we show love for the Chinese.

I made myself unhappy measuring my love against a given norm. The truth is, we make ourselves happy in among a wide variety of loves; all count.

My parents had a long and eventful marriage and were always a bit like movie stars to me when they were young.

What I always knew about my parents was that they were in love, and this love had a fizz. It was exciting to be their child, to be around them. There was a dynamism between them, a charge.

Trinidad's language is a fusion of English, African, and French, and so we have our own words and even our own dictionary. Steupse is a common local word, and it's the onomatopoeic word for the sound people make to show disapproval, or to show they are vexed, when they suck their teeth together.

I was an observant but dreamy child. I had a lazy eye and wild curls.

Born on an island, I could swim before I could walk, thrown many times into swimming pools and warm transparent Caribbean waters: sink or swim, that was my first lesson. While I'm not a natural athlete, I'm still a strong swimmer and feel a great affinity with the sea.

Long-term heterosexual monogamy is still the dominant model: men and women still want to pair for a long period of time.

At the age of 62, my father died of cancer - it was much too soon. My mother never remarried or got over it, never even thought of another man.