Nobody ever wins by the cavalry coming to rescue you. It isn't a question of you're happy if you get married, or you get thin, or you get rich, because I've known lots of thin, rich, married people who are absolutely miserable.

Growing up in Ireland, there never seemed to be the notion that children should be seen and not heard. We all looked forward to mealtimes when we'd sit around the table and talk about our days. Storytelling and long, rambling conversations were considered good things.

My mother hoped I would meet a nice doctor or barrister or accountant who would marry me and take me to live in what is now called Fashionable Dublin Four. But she felt that this was a vain hope. I was a bit loud to make a nice professional wife, and anyway, I was too keen on spending my holidays in far flung places to meet any of these people.

An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.

I think people who make movies and have invested a lot of money in them get frightened that if they challenge an audience they are going to repel them. And I think the opposite; it's really true.

Being in a scenario where you're thinking, 'I can't do what I want to do due to the financial burden that comes with some of it,' makes you think, 'Well, I could go and do an after-dinner speech every night.' I'd probably earn more than I could in track-and-field. But that's a dangerous scenario to get yourself into.

For this to make sense, of course, it would have to be a fair financial deal for us. But I think this could be the occasion for us to build a true partnership in content. And we're especially interested because interactive services are a key field for us.

The Obama economy is great for rich people. It's terrible for everybody else.