TIM MINCHIN

My most visceral childhood memory is getting home from hockey. Much of our family time revolved around hockey, and it rains a lot in Perth, and we'd get home tired and wet in our tracksuits, and the smell I'd hold in my nose is of mother's vegetable soup.

My granddad had a 1,500-acre hobby farm that he had built up from scratch in Western Australia, so my siblings and I spent our childhoods going there a lot.

Christopher Hitchens's autobiography, 'Hitch 22', is a poignant read and very interesting because I have a very poor knowledge of recent political history - or, for that matter, distant political history.

If you make a good show, you tend to get good reviews. I don't believe it is as arbitrary as some people tend to think, which artists do to protect themselves against bad reviews.

If you don't have anything different to say, don't say it at all. That's my rule.

The point of privilege and the notion of mansplaining is that sometimes I definitely feel like I should shut up. That's it functioning. That's the notion of privilege functioning.

Comedy is often a short career because you get to a point where you are no longer a small thing punching up at targets; you are the big thing, and it's hard to write from that position.

I often get references to 'slight' or whatever, and my weight's been a thing for me my whole life. I have to really, really work. I train six times a week to just be normal and not be fat.

I'm quite a gregarious, outgoing person.

You do get a bit paranoid that you're becoming a sort of narcissist, an artistic solipsist when you're doing stand-up.

I do feel infuriated by the things I perceive to be unfair.

Fight for what is true. What is true is enough.

I don't think you should bring up your kids with no wallowing. Somewhere in there is an area where you make sure your kids are all right, but they can also cry. Just maybe not every morning.

If there was Twitter when I wrote some of my early stuff, there'd be no 'Matilda.'

I don't like courting controversy because I don't like people not liking me.

Because I'm on my own on stage and wear bare feet and look like a pixie, people always think I'm little.

I never thought I was going to be an actor.

I'm not a total chump. I write stuff that's reasonably musically complex.

My whole mission is to have a long, interesting career, not a short spiky one.

I was naive. Before 'Larrikins,' I thought passion, hard work, and a skill set will mean that anything you want to do will get done. I don't think that anymore.

I had lunch with Andrew Lloyd Webber at the end of 2011 because my musical 'Matilda' is in one of the theatres that he owns in London.

In terms of comedy, I never did five-minute sets or clubs or anything. I just started doing shows. Coming from that theater background, it never crossed my mind that I should start doing five-minute sets.

I'm not supporting nor not supporting TV casting shows - there is no doubt they are created for financial reasons - but I don't have a problem with wanting to sell tickets, and if you want to do an arena version of a rock musical, you have to sell a lot of tickets to justify the cast.

You've got to teach yourself you can do your job no matter what happens.

My daughter was two weeks old when I wrote 'White Wine in the Sun.' I can remember just sobbing and having to leave the room.