Being a parent.

My books. There’s no greater feeling than a disabled child coming up to me and saying, “I’ve never seen myself in a book before.”

Nothing is the same as the sense of pride and achievement I feel when I see my kids growing up and enjoying the simple pleasures in life.

Work-wise, joining the National Theatre when I was 21.

Imaginative, dull, amiable.

And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Mostly the pain. I don’t want to be trapped in a body that hurts.

The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.

The idiocy of going to Skye from New Zealand in April 2020. All of a sudden, I’m turning on the news and hearing myself as an item. I have never been more mortified.

I like the idea of being atoms that other people can breathe in, and fabulous worm food.