The key to nature's therapy is feeling like a tiny part of it, not a master over it. There's amazing pride in seeing a bee land on a flower you planted - but that's not your act of creation, it's your act of joining in.
— Victoria Coren Mitchell
Being bored by clothes shopping feels smart and intellectual: 'Ooh, get me, insufficiently entertained by racks of skinny jeans; my mind is on higher things.'
I've never danced while driving, nor put on makeup.
Never take your makeup off before bed. Sleep in it. That way, you're all ready to go if a hot postman rings the doorbell early.
Moisturise, moisturise, moisturise... is the motto of people who are in the business of selling moisturisers. Your body is already 60% water. If that's not moist enough for you, sit in a puddle.
I grew up near London Zoo, with which I was obsessed. I would lie in bed at night, thinking about the lions and tigers and wolves that were prowling only a few miles away.
I like snow, but I don't want to live in Siberia.
I play poker, a game where there is no edge but the luck of the deal and the skill of the player.
I'm convinced we go to school at the wrong time. I'd have been delighted, aged 12, to get out into the world and earn some money doing something menial.
They say multitasking is a female trait, but it's not about gender; it's about personality type.
Women are under-represented in TV comedy for a variety of reasons, the hackneyed 'fear that women aren't funny' being one of them.
The Highway Code can't be that difficult to understand, and yet my brain seems to treat it as a set of nuclear fission instructions in Old Japanese.
When I was at school, I was forced to play lacrosse, a game in which tiny, rock-hard missiles fly at your head, and you must catch them with a stick to avoid a brain haemorrhage. I was regularly punished for not taking part more wholeheartedly.
I've never seen any 'Star Wars' movie.
A long time ago, my grandfather used to play blackjack with me, when I was very small, and I quite enjoyed that.
I play quite an old-fashioned game of poker. It's a lot about getting a sense of people at the table rather than the maths of the thing.
I don't know if I'm a writer who plays poker or a poker player who writes.
I'm not a luddite. Science, computers, medicine, they're all great. But nature is context. That which we can't control. Its constant mortality and immortality is an answer to the terror of finite existence. It reassures the soul.
I can't believe that 100% of the people who stand in art galleries looking at art are thinking, 'Well, here I am, looking at art.' They must be having some sort of other, unselfconscious experience.
When I was learning to drive, I thought the big milestones were changing gear, changing lane, and three-point-turns.
If you find it difficult to draw a neat line with an eyeliner pencil, start with a big, thick, wonky line and then reduce it with eye makeup remover. This is serious advice. I do this every single time I put makeup on.
London Zoo is amazing. I want to take my child there so that she can feel the awe and wonder I felt (and feel) myself.
I have a complicated relationship with the zoo; maybe everyone does. It's so wonderful and so sad.
Driving a car is no longer about zooming down clear lanes, the joy and freedom of the road flowing through your hair like a fine westerly breeze. It's about solid traffic, petrol fumes, spy cameras, eco-guilt, and simultaneous social media.
Video piracy is among the most irritating aspects of modern life for those who work in the film business. Adverts telling you not to commit video piracy are among the most irritating aspects of modern life for those who don't.
When I was at school, I got into trouble quite often.
You can always recognise my restless peers and me; we are the people whose feet you hear tramping along the pavement at the other end of the phone line because we can only make calls while moving.
I pay higher premiums because my speeding points spell 'recklessness' to the insurance company, but you can't imagine how risk-averse I am at the wheel. I only go over 30 at all because it's dangerous to drive too much slower than everyone else.
I don't really think of myself as stupid - but then, who does?
It is weird, the relationship between people and food. It's always deeper than you think. It always stands for something else.
It may be vain to care too much how you look, but it is impolite to care too little. You do a generous thing for the world when you present yourself properly.
I have quite a good card sense. My grandmother taught me to play bridge, so I had a reasonable sense of the cards and how they work.
Sometimes, the only reason to watch anything acclaimed is on the off-chance you really hate it.
I never wanted poker to be a job. That's partly because I love it, and it's fun, and I didn't want it to stop being fun, and partly because, I suppose, something in me doesn't feel right about calling poker a job. It's not grown-up enough. But it's a hobby that takes up an enormous amount of my time.
It's not that I can't find art beautiful. I just don't know what to do, standing there in the gallery. I don't know what to think about. Once I've seen it, I've seen it; that takes about two seconds. I am interested and then immediately bored, immediately.
I have cared so much and so little about the cars I've owned.
I don't quite comprehend what Kim Kardashian is, where she came from, or why we talk about her.
Nature made your eyebrows like that for a reason. I don't know the reason. Some people say it's to do with keeping rain out of monkeys' eyes. Whatever. The point is, if you try to redesign your eyebrows with tweezers and pens, it will look terrible.
I dreamed of growing up and becoming a zookeeper.
Makeup is only fun if it's occasional and capricious - just like it's a treat to have an empty day ahead, but it wouldn't be if you were doing 20 years in Parkhurst.
Casino games such as roulette, blackjack, baccarat, slot machines and so on, are stacked in favour of the house.
I know schools don't have money for everything, but I wish they could all have a couple of violins for kids to try; a couple of cellos, perhaps a bassoon.
Some of us find 'relaxing' to be, in itself, nerve-racking. If we aren't doing something useful or, at least, that seems useful, we feel guilty, impatient, and mortal.
I am terrible at doing nothing. I'm not brilliant at doing one thing at a time, either. Ideally, I would fill out my tax return while watching a film; peel potatoes while reading the post; send emails in the bath.
My speeding offences (whether caught or not) are always in situations where the speed limit is 30, but I think it's 40. And I'm never doing 40, always a careful 37.
School is supposed to civilise us, to tame our wilder instincts and teach us how to be more sensible, more knowledgeable, and cleverer.
Reverse-parking in a small space is one of those high-pressure situations where a critical, watching eye becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When I met my husband, he had never spent more than £10 on a haircut.
I'm just a poker player who does a bit of TV.
The phrase 'working mum' makes me nervous.
