I like to cook things very slowly.

You can never fully put your finger on the reason why you're suddenly, inexplicably compelled to explore one life as opposed to another.

I don’t like to rehearse. And I couldn’t understand how you could go through eight weeks of rehearsal, without exhausting every possibility. To the point where, you know, you would just lie gasping on the floor!

When it comes to parenthood everyone thinks they will be terrible at it. We don't think we have it in us. Then you find out that you do, which truly is a miracle in life.

I spend many months in apparently listless rumination out of which I hope something will emerge.

I don't torture myself. And I do the work because of the pleasure involved. I'm satisfying a compulsion I find nigh-on irresistible. It's not necessarily because of the work itself. I just feel the need for a period of regeneration afterwards. Like leaving a field fallow when you've grazed too much on it. I feel depleted.

My life is devoted to self-delusion - and I have a great capacity for that - but it's the thing that gives me the most pleasure, so I can't complain about it.