Sara Pascoe

“I always get nervous before a gig, so I look over my writing, trying not to fantasise about all the things that could go horribly wrong.”

“I really respect the work and speeches of Tony Benn. He was a powerful speaker with a huge heart.”

“I hate how old people get in my way when I'm swimming. You're trying to get into the zone and normally, if there's someone faster than you, you get out of the way, but old people don't; they're like, you can go round me. I give a little tut when I pass them.”

“I have to remind myself that I am a comic, I'm not a politician.”

“It's unfair but true: youth is attractive, curvy women are attractive, outliers who look a bit different to everybody else are attractive.”

“I started comedy as a hobby, really, and it still doesn't seem like a proper job.”

“Worse than useless, I worry e-petitions are detrimental, with their sense of catharsis and mini-activism. Channelling away agitation, giving us the opportunity to show all our Facebook friends just exactly how great we are at being compassionate.”

“Culturally even, you have shows like 'Friends' or 'Sex in the City' that are imbibed along with like fairy stories, which are all about The One. Then we feel like we're looking for it, and if relationships end, what we've experienced isn't valid.”

“A show that I loved as a kid was 'Maid Marian And Her Merry Men'. It was a really strong female character making fun of the boys, an inversion of gender politics. But it was very funny, too. I always wanted to be one of the village people messing about in the mud and being stinky.”

“If we accept ourselves as animals, and have empathy and tolerance, compassion to others, understand that humans are territorial, aggressive and have gender aspects, then we can change things.”

“People learn more when they're enjoying themselves.”

“Since I was really small, my mum says I wouldn't talk at breakfast because I would just read the back of the cereal packet.”

“Many of my memories of my mum are of her in the bath with a book, utilising her limited spare time by simultaneously washing and studying. She left school with no qualifications and now has a PhD. If I seem like I am bragging about this, I am.”

“When I was 14, I auditioned for Michael Barrymore's 'My Kind Of People'.”

“Regency literature was too coal-y for me, too long-winded and describey. I preferred modern books where you had to read other books explaining what the first book meant to know what happened.”

“My earliest food memory is being starving hungry after swimming. I think that's quite common with children: the second you're out of the water you want to have a Twix, a cup of tea and chips and salty stuff.”

“When you're the person in the room with the microphone, you have a platform to talk about whatever you want, and it's much more interesting if we're discussing something that feels relevant.”

“Growing older has helped me become empathetic to other people and their reasons for making choices. I used to think there was a definitive right and wrong and that only I knew what they were and so I should be dictator of the world.”

“We're all diminished and restricted by sweeping statements defining boy and girl, our expectations and disappointments with ourselves, the way we look, what we enjoy, and the choices we make.”