When you live in a small house with five younger siblings, it's actually far more sensible- and much quicker- to cry alone.

I don't regret not going to college. Students learn up to the age of 21, then stop. I'll always be learning - the things that really matter in life. How to sign on, how to get free food, how to be streetwise.

When you've got a mother who's given birth to eight children, you know, often without any kind of medical intervention - just she gave birth to one of my brothers sort of on the bedroom floor in front of all of us -you know, you see that women are fairly capable.

If you've been fat, you will always feel and see the world as a fat person; you know how difficult it is... It's the same coming from a working-class background... it never leaves you.

But nearly every woman I know has a roughly similar story - in fact, dozens of them: stories about being obsessed with a celebrity, work colleague or someone they vaguely knew for years; living in a parallel world in their head; conjuring up endless plots and scenarios for this thing that never actually happened.

If you do it properly, life is art, really.

If you read all your history books, there are no women in them.