Several: cutting the local vicar's lawn, shovelling shit from a stable, waiting tables, picking up and washing actors' smelly pants and socks.

Leafleting for a window company when I was 12. I remember putting them through letterboxes thinking: I’m going to sell drugs, because this is rubbish.

Cockroach stamper at a dried-flower factory.

Working on an assembly line in a plastics factory.

The thing actually that I most dislike is cruelty. I can't stand cruel people. And if I see people doing something mean to somebody else, just to make themselves feel important it really gets me mad.

I believe in this country. I believe in the American people. I believe that people are more good than bad. I believe tragic things happen, I think there's evil in the world, but I think that at the end of the day, if we work hard, and if we're true to those things in us that feel true and feel right, that the world gets a little better each time.

My daughters are something, and they just surprise and enchant and impress me more and more every single day as they grow up. And so these days, when we talk, we talk as parent to child, but also we learn from them.

Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not doing the right thing.

There are some things about being president that I still have difficulty doing. … For example, faking emotion. Because I feel it is an insult to the people I'm dealing with. For me to feign outrage, for example, feels to me like I'm not taking the American people seriously. I'm absolutely positive that I'm serving the American people better if I'm maintaining my authenticity. And that's an overused word. And these days people practice being authentic. But I'm at my best when I believe what I am saying.

Part of what separates us from the other creatures on earth is that we make up stories. We are storytellers. And we can tell bad stories and we can tell good stories. We can tell stories that lead to division and hate and war. Or we can tell stories that lead to cooperation and peace and progress.