Like something or someone is part of your DNA, the fabric of who you are.

Safe and peaceful. It gives you a sense of ease.

When you put others before yourself, and you’d do anything for them.

A shimmering bioluminescence that lights up each cell.

I have never been able to become an atheist and, even though I know it is completely irrational and cannot be backed up, I think when I die I’m going to glory.

Impatient, ambitious and happy.

I understand that you lose the register of hearing that enables you to hear crickets, and when I can’t hear crickets in the summer I’ll be really sad.

My A-level results in 1998. I flunked my history A-level and lost my place at Cambridge. It broke my heart for years; now I’m really glad, because I pull out the whole “I went to a polytechnic” thing. But at the time for a teenager who was rather pleased with herself, it was absolutely devastating.

Every single morning the sun comes up and you get to try again.

I often hate-read the Daily Mail. It’s the worst of media and the worst of mankind distilled into one publication and in some ways it feels a moral duty to be familiar with it. Too often we all bolt ourselves into an echo chamber, which I think lacks courage, and can lead to a kind of intellectual conceitedness.