It was probably a series of biographies of scientists like Pasteur, or even earlier ones — Leeuwenhoek inventing the microscope and Madame Curie. I forget how many others, but it was really just, for me, a fascination to learn about these great heroes. At that time, of course, they were totally inaccessible, almost non-human, to me. It became very interesting to me.

That really crystallized for me what some really passionate founders who could write some code could do to change things, and this gave me the confidence to say, “You know what? They can do this. We can definitely do this.” ... So without a doubt, Reddit would not exist if it weren’t for Masters of Doom.

I think of another book that I read – what was it called? – Night Train to Lisbon. I wouldn’t say it’s in that same category, but sometimes there was just a line in a book that changed my life in some way, and it came at a critical juncture. The line was, “Given that there is so much in all of us, what happens to the rest?”

I remember the awakening that occurred in me when I read, for the first time, Franz Kafka. ... That morning I was happy. I wanted to run out and embrace them, all these garbage collectors, because they taught me that there was another world than the world of Kafka, which is absurd and desperate, and despairing.

I took Nicole out to dinner for the first time on 19 October, 1991. After that, everything changed.

I get to airports ridiculously early. It’s an uncontrollable urge.

People need justice.

I would like to write a play which doesn’t disappoint me 20 years later.

I’ve become fonder and fonder of Brian Friel and Faith Healer has sort of become my favourite play.

I’ve been reading – and fighting – Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts; feeling admiration and anger in equal parts.