Anne-Marie Duff

I was desperately shy when I was wee. Totally lacked confidence socially. When I look back at school photographs, I'm always the one shrinking in the back. What I really wanted to do was become a writer, and I don't think the residue of that has ever gone away. I still feel the ultimate achievement would be to write a novel.

I think it helps to have a good old-fashioned trajectory, plodding along. Obviously one has an ego and it's really easy to have that ego tickled, but what helps me get through the night is if I concentrate on just quality of work so that I don't panic about my profile.

The thing about dancing - what it taught me all those years - is it gives you an amazing sense of discipline in forcing yourself to do things that you know are good for you but you don't really want to do.

I think one of the most important directions to be pursued in the 'sciences of human action' is to develop a natural-law ethics based on nature rather than, or at least to supplement, ethics based on theological revelation.