It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerfully and put my thoughts into vivid perspective.
A. N. Wilson
Westminster is a piece of this city's energy, something the contemporary world has forgotten.
Alessandro Michele
From Lady Carlisle's trip to Moscow in 1663 to Veronica Atkinson's tour of duty during the 1989 Romanian revolution, it is clear that very little has changed. Four hundred years of innovation, liberation, and improvement clearly bypassed the Foreign Office while making its rounds through Westminster.
Amanda Foreman
After 23 years closeted at Westminster, where often all you can see out of the windows are other parliamentary buildings, I appreciate space, and I retired to Dartmoor to find it.
Ann Widdecombe
Mice are everywhere at Westminster but many MPs, including me, did not report them because we were afraid of their possible fate.
Cats are ideal for politicians. I had two when I arrived at Westminster, Sooty and Sweep, who had come with a flat I had bought six years earlier in Fulham from someone who was about to go abroad. There was a better offer ahead of me but she took mine because I would take the cats.
It is a truth universally unacknowledged at Westminster that there is life after politics.
I went to a branch of the City of Westminster College in Maida Vale to do drama, sociology and English literature. I stayed for three or four months.
Ashley Walters
The high reputation of Westminster abroad is not entirely reflected at home.
Betty Boothroyd
Westminster is no joke. I took some tough classes there. It prepared me for a tough career.
Brooke Baldwin
My drive comes from my parents and from Westminster.
I mean, you can't walk down the aisle in Westminster Abbey in a strapless dress, it just won't happen - it has to suit the grandeur of that aisle, it's enormous.
Bruce Oldfield
No more top-down politics with Westminster dictating what's right for every community. We must all be partners in designing a better future for our country.
Caroline Lucas
Westminster's hardly a billboard for people-centred politics. Given its makeup, the term 'Commons' is pretty ironic, too.
The creation of regional mayors has done little to reduce the sense that all power is concentrated in Westminster, and all investment in London.
In the public mind, when they think of politicians, sadly they probably tend to think of men in grey suits doing work behind closed doors at Westminster. I want to get away from the idea.
Westminster is a jungle - and the hunter can always smell fear on its prey.
Charles Kennedy
Public perception of the Westminster arena, with all its posturings, does little to engender a sense of voter belief.
Brexit has changed everything in British politics - it has blown open a cosy, zombie-like closed world of Westminster parliamentary politics. It has broken open the traditional line between left and right, which was already an exhausted tradition.
Claire Fox
There have been several Duchesses of Westminster but there is only one Chanel!
Coco Chanel
I met Prince Harry at Westminster and I want him to be my new boyfriend, but unfortunately I don't think it is going to happen.
I refused to pair with a Tory MP, I refused all foreign junkets and I've never had a drink in a Westminster bar.
Finally, there's a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.
Brexit cannot be done with the traditional Westminster/Whitehall system as Vote Leave warned repeatedly before 23 June 2016.
Westminster has let the whole country down for many years.
Outside Westminster, political debate must seem like white noise that bears little relevance to people's everyday lives. But political choices made by the governments we elect have a real impact on how we live.
And so in my warnings, I was pointing to a number of incidents around the communion that could undermine our growing sense of communion - of becoming a global communion. So that's why I pointed to New Westminster in Canada, to incidents in the United States, and Sydney itself.
When you look at Westminster you think of it as pale, male and stale and I hate that so much.
I'm not sure when exactly it started to become the fashion in Westminster to skim-read documents, only bother with bullet points or, worse, to take them entirely on trust - but that, perhaps, was when we began as a country to lose our way.
Political shenanigans come and go, yet often what feels like a big deal in Westminster fails to get a mention on the news. As a result, the public wisely let most of the hurly-burly of politics wash over their heads.
Touch but a cobweb in Westminster Hall, and the old spider of the law is out upon you with all his vermin at his heels.
No one out there is interested in who did what to whom in Westminster politics.
Thankfully, due to the United Kingdom and the commitment of the Westminster government we are able to ensure that money brought in, whether it be from the City of London or from North Sea oil, can be pooled and directed to wherever it is needed most. That is what being in the United Kingdom is all about.
At the end of the day, whether it was in a little church or Westminster Abbey didn't matter: it was me, as a brother, doing a reading for my sister and her husband at their wedding, and I wanted to do it right.
I do not own a car, and my main form of travel to Westminster and in my constituency is by bicycle. I also take my bike on trains to meetings in other parts of the country, which enables me to see other cities and the other parts of the country.
Lisa Nandy is absolutely right that we need to devolve economic power away from Westminster and learn from what Labour councils around the country are doing.
One of the things I want to achieve in the potentially short time I'm in Westminster is to stop people thinking we're all the same. Because while they believe that, the establishment stays in the same people's hands.
In Westminster, I make sure I maximise my ability to represent my constituents. I can do that in a variety of ways: by asking written questions or questions in the House of Commons, through the scrutiny of bills and by sitting on the environmental audit select committee every week, as well as other committees.
Being an MP is quite a strange job, because you do it in two different places. Half the time I'm in Westminster and the other half I'm in my constituency and the job is different in both of them.
I was elected to Westminster when I was 25; I was Britain's youngest MP.
There is a danger of Scottish politics being between two sets of dinosaurs... the Nationalists who can't accept they were rejected by the people, and some colleagues at Westminster who think nothing has changed.
I didn't particularly want to go to Westminster - not that there were many seats available or chances for women to get elected. In 1987, Labour sent down 50 MPs, and only one of them was a woman.
What happens when there is a conflict between the Scottish parliament, if it was established, and the Westminster parliament? Who is supreme?
Westminster politics is very unattractive, and people are channelling political energy into more inward questioning - there are a lot of musicians whose songs are all about feeling, and it's almost like that's the only safe place to express yourself.
On a very gloomy dismal day, just such a one as it ought to be, I went to see Westminster Abbey.
As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.
Westminster Abbey, the Tower, a steeple, one church, and then another, presented themselves to our view; and we could now plainly distinguish the high round chimneys on the tops of the houses, which yet seemed to us to form an innumerable number of smaller spires, or steeples.
I can cope with politicians now I've had about 40,000 cockroaches tipped over my head. Westminster's going to be no problem.
I think that political coverage generally comes in on a level that means if you live and breathe Westminster detail and diary, then you get it.
What I was excited about was the opportunity for punters to be part of politics. The whole idea was to allow the voices of people outside this weirdo palace of Westminster to be heard. I thought the whole social media thing might be really positive.
