We humans are here because nothing can be perfect. There always have to be some living things that are unsatisfied, itchy, trying too hard. If it was all just animals and rocks and lettuce, the gods wouldn't feel like they had enough to do.

My earliest memory is aged three, seeing sunlight on water and feeling it was really magical.

The life you live in front of an audience is like an altered state - it's not totally real. I'm always, even in the course of one day, trying to find ways to balance both sides.

I looked at other couples and wondered how they could be so calm about it. They held hands as if they weren't even holding hands. When Steve and I held hands, I had to keep looking down to marvel at it. There was my hand, the same hand I've always had - oh, but look! What is it holding? It's holding Steve's hand! Who is Steve? My three-dimensional boyfriend. Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I would go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before.

I wrestle my fears with every big decision I make. Ultimately, maybe all that wrestling does is make you sick of your own thoughts, and so with nothing resolved you just go ahead and have unprotected sex. The moment I became pregnant, everything became out of gait. None of those fears seem relevant in the same way, and that's so like life, that once you do the daring move you're in a totally different landscape. Now it's a new story.

Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.

I don't think I'm more of a screenwriter than I am a fiction writer. I'm more of a reader than a film-watcher, so I imagine that I'm not approaching fiction or films in a particularly cinematic way.