There is absolutely no point in not being a populist. What I feel emboldened to do is to take something which is a minority interest and make it accessible without dumbing it down. I'm such an enthusiast for peculiar things, things that are perhaps a bit avant-garde, and try and involve everyone.

I always call 'Billy Elliot' a fantasy autobiography because I never wanted to be a dancer, but I got a lot of stick from the other kids about wanting to be a writer and being interested in drama.

Whether you are a writer or an actor or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else.

In many ways, theatre is more rewarding for a writer. I used to think it was like painting a wall - that when the play is finished, it's done - but now I realise it's more like gardening; you plant the thing, then you have to constantly tend it. You're part of a thing that's living.

I'm trying to make all the characters change and grow, or regress.

Everyone's mind wanders, without doubt, and we always have to start over. Everyone resists or dislikes the thought of or is too tired to meditate at times, and we have to be able to begin again.

The travel book is a convenient metaphor for life, with its optimistic beginning or departure, its determined striving, and its reflective conclusion. Journeys change travellers just as a good travel book can change readers.

The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.