Abbie Cornish

I didn't actually know what a vegetarian was until I was 13 years old. I know in this day and age it's hard to believe that, but I think because I grew up on a farm, I wasn't indulged in magazines, newspapers, Internet, television. And so, for some reason, I was never exposed to what a vegetarian was.

I think as a child you know when it's time for your parents to split. You realise they love each other, but they're not in love with each other. And I think as a child it's much better for your parents to split than for them to stay and have dysfunction within the family.

Self-indulgence is something to watch, but anything that helps you understand situations that are difficult to understand is good. If you're having some sort of emotional trauma, you need to find a person to talk to about it who says, 'This is quite normal; it's fine.'

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.