Quotes from Sara Pascoe

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 I was a child, I had an intense fear of going to prison. I wasn't on the run or anything - my crimes were small and they were all against fashion. But I had nightmares about accidentally killing someone, or being falsely accused.

Utilitarianism is a philosophy from the olden days exploring the idea that whatever is best for the majority is the fairest.

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

But with 'Newsrevue' I started doing some characters, and I just loved how you were in control. You could write something that day and go and do it that night, rather than waiting for a job that involves other people. So I did character stand-up, and then proper stand-up, and I loved it; I got addicted.

When I go back to Essex, where I grew up, I'm still appalled by the homophobia and casual racism and aggression. I live in Lewisham, in south London, and though it might look a bit rough, it's a diverse, friendly neighbourhood.

I didn't watch TV in the 90s and early 00s. I was too busy trying to grow out a fringe and perm.

I want my funeral to be uncomfortably quiet.

I get a fizzy thing in my brain, like a nice glass of wine, and I want to know facts and I want to understand.

I have never been to Ladies' Day at the Grand National. I've never been to any day there, truth be told, and unless they introduce a Scruffy People Who Believe Horse Racing to Be Deeply Cruel Day and pay me to attend I can't see that changing.

I would have been an essayist in the 18th century. Maybe I'd have had one gag in the piece, but essentially I'd be saying something.

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'm proud that I can do that material in a club gig where a lot of people think Page 3's a bit of fun and you're the feminist with the problem. It's always funnier to say: this is my opinion, look how we disagree.

That's the thing: when I listen on public transport, my headphones act as a separator - a wired barrier between me and the nearest people. Yet my podcasts drag me through the depths of human nature.

No success will ever quench your thirst - my rich person's therapist told me that.

If you view history as a backdrop, set-dressing or fiction, then 'Pride and Prejudice' is hugely entertaining. My reread saw the misery of the female characters' reality. My new reaction was sadness and fury. Knowledge ruins everything!

I could barely function as an adult; I slept through alarm clocks and lost train tickets mid-journey.

Sometimes I am lucky enough to hang out with Tim Key and he is constantly funny. Every moment. When I haven't seen him for a bit I do his voice in my head to entertain myself.

After an afternoon of interviewing Siri it turns out there are millions of questions that it can't or won't answer: How did you get my phone number? How many Siris are there? Did you have a Christmas party? Who is playing the tiny xylophone before and after each interaction? Are you spying on us, plotting the downfall of our species?

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.

So why don't all religions get together and go to war with atheists? Because we all want the same thing: respect and tolerance and not to be forced to do anything we don't want to.

I try so hard to be tolerant of everyone and their choices, but people who harm pets or support factory farming have an enemy in me.

Even quicker than the development of super-technology is the human adaptation to taking it for granted. We live in a world where regular people converse publicly with an inanimate object and escape Bedlam or a dunking.

We don't live in a world where, if you commit a crime, your life's over. We as a society believe in rehabilitation. We believe in second and third chances.