I like having my back pressed against a wall and being made to work harder so I don't embarrass myself.

I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.

He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes a slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.

But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

I read very, very little fiction as a kid. All the books I can remember are junior science books.

I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.

Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.