An ideal reader is someone who doesn't know what on Earth you've been doing, who will look at it with absolute freshness and go, 'Oh, so that's what you've been up to.'

I inhaled Dickens as a kid, and I've always been fascinated by the Victorians. So many ridiculous objects they had! They created things like mustache cups, so you wouldn't wet your mustache when you were drinking tea. And eyebrow combs. What's happened to all the eyebrow combs? Marvelous things.

Fairy tales, before they were sanitized, were very dark, and kids love that. 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman feels like Beckett for kids. I think there's plenty of room for that. And I think there's a danger of being too patronizing to children, having things too sanitized.

I had a very happy childhood. But I was sent off to boarding school at quite a young age, this massive Victorian house that was suffocated in ivy. I think there is a part of that school in 'Heap House.'

When you meet a new woman who does stand-up, it is instantly like, 'Yes! In the gang'. Because you know the logistics of the job: they travel a lot, it's lonely in dressing rooms, you know that they have bad gigs. That means they don't have to prove themselves to me.

I'm so thankful that I got to travel from a relatively young age.

I love what I do, and I love doing it, and I love getting better at it. I just am not willing to risk... Much... to go on to the next level. I don't want to risk my personal sanity or happiness or my family or the love of my life.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.