The inspiration can come in such small ways that if you sit there just waiting for the big epiphany you'll sit there for the rest of your life.

Good luck to progressive candidates in U.S. Senate elections against the usual rich, white, racist, women-hating pricks they run against.

We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.

I think that the Brexit negotiations have to be a big thing that determines the democratic fight-back and galvanizes democratic Europe again against this rising tide of nationalism.

How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete?

I think, ironically, the media's been good for America, but Trump's been good for the media. He's revitalized The New York Times and CNN - it's never had so much integrity and so much power ever, and that's because being attacked by constant authoritarians and fascists with an agenda has actually got them to sharpen up and to get back to base principles about what the media should actually be. It's also that the circulation boost has removed this horrible, incipient commercial pressure that compromises media.

Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as I struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life