Vick Hope

“I think a good book is one you can lose yourself in and find yourself in, and that's what I did with 'Swing Time.'”

“I talk about a lot is how black women are so often referred to as feisty or sassy or aggressive or difficult just for innocuously expressing yourself. I've heard it so much throughout my life - at school and my career - and you get this horrible knotted feeling in the pit of your stomach because you start to believe it about yourself as well.”

“We are where we come from but also where we are going.”

“I love a freshly tailored white shirt, dungarees and cute loafers, like Prince George.”

“I was living in Argentina in Buenos Aires and I was working as a journalist, but I was earning so little money and I needed extra money, and I went on Craigslist, looking for writing jobs.”

“Of course, who you are and what's inside your head is more important than how you look, but that isn't going to be nurtured properly if you don't feel comfortable in your own skin.”

“I just felt really ugly growing up.”

“I used to do contemporary dance, I'd pretend to be a tree or a rock.”

“It feels dismissive to suggest relationships can ever be truly colourblind. And more importantly, I don't believe they ever should be. To not see colour or race would be to ignore racism rather than combating it.”

“When you see someone every single day, at 5:30 A.M. in the morning, you have to break down all barriers, you become very close.”

“I want little black girls, little black boys to know that they can be themselves because they do belong for who that they are.”

“For my mum, it was really important to teach me and my brothers, so it came more from her to be honest than anything else. She made sure that we just read loads of books about slavery, about black culture, about black history but I don't think everyone would have had that obviously.”

“I've felt too stupid and inadequate amongst my ultra-intelligent course-mates, yet too geeky and opinionated for commercial radio.”

“When you can't get out to buy specific ingredients, whipping up your own curry paste or harissa paste is super satisfying, using all those powdered spices that often sit at the back of the cupboard.”

“I don't think that we should be trying to forge love online. I think that we should get it offline.”

“I have completely tired myself out before - but I think that's natural, we all find it difficult to find balance. It's something I'm a great advocate of now, because I've had to learn the hard way, but I think 2018 was the year I burnt the candle way too brightly at both ends.”

“As I grow older, it's getting more and more important to me. I'm becoming conscious and learning to celebrate where I'm from and my roots. I think I rejected it to an extent when I was young, because it was different, and you want to fit in and look like other kids.”

“Taking risks doesn't mean shirking responsibility, but embracing possibilities.”

“I'm from Newcastle and went to Cambridge University and I worried whether I'd fit in; I'm mixed race, so my mum grew up in Nigeria and my dad grew up in England, and I'd sometimes wonder which culture I felt I identified with better.”

“When I was growing up all I ever wanted was straight hair as you want to be the same as everyone else but then last summer a hairdresser friend said, 'let's stop straightening this and keep it curly,' and I've never looked back.”