Vexillography is a very big word! Vexillography is really the high science and art and understanding of flags and their history - the academic word for flag making and heraldry.

Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible - to live in the truth, as I say - to get out of the lie.

When I was young, they thought I was from outer space. I was the only gay person they probably knew, and they struggled with that. Everybody knew I was gay. They just didn't want to talk about it.

It's not so easy to be gay or even a woman in some places in the world, and in many countries, it's illegal to be gay. You can be put to death. It's a global struggle. A human rights struggle on a global scale.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

Health care decisions are the sole province of an individual, her family, her doctor and her faith. Fear of the law has no place in the equation.

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice, heroism, war, politics and family struggle.

The primary school I attended in Shanghai was a very liberal one, established by scholars who had return from an education in France. The children of leading families were enrolled there, including the son of a well-known man believed to be a top gangster of the underworld!