The thing I am most interested in is power relations - it is so easy in a relationship like that [of an artist and a gallery manager], to imagine that the other person is living a perfect life.

I'm always just trying to get the work done so that I can be free - like, with the sense that, like, the real me has no interest in this? I just gotta do it for my boss. But the catch is that I'm never free, I never finish the work, so I don't know who this freewheeling employee with extracurricular interests is.

I had a joint once and I didn't feel right for a whole year

I like embracing kind of normal forms but am always trying to approach them as if no one's ever done that before. As if I'm literally the first person to ever write a book.

Somewhat predictably, I'm much more comfortable in front of an audience - and a big audience is even better - than faced with one stranger. This always seems like a bit of a failing on my part, as a human. I think that's also why I put myself situations where I'm forced to engage in other ways.

… it wasn’t pretend, I wasn’t in a fairytale or a fable. I shut my eyes and absorbed the silent whoomp that always accompanies this revelation. It’s the sound of the real world, gigantic and impossible, replacing the smaller version of reality that I wear like a bonnet, clutched tightly under my chin.

But, like ivy, we grow where there is room for us.