Plague has hung over human history. The biggest human extinction was after 1492 in North and South America when the mortality rate was 95 per cent, which is enormous. But again, I'm actually giving you grounds for optimism: There were enough to continue. The five per cent who made it through are what you need to survive a bottleneck, which we have been through before.

It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.

I don't find the idea of sewing degrading. A thing is degrading when you are forced to do it, through economic reasons or through slavery or some other form of compulsion.

I tell, therefore you are.

If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

I am not running for mayor yet. But if it comes to be true that people cannot voice an opinion unless they have been elected, then we are no longer in a democracy.

Madness is only an amplification of what you already are.