I don't think, generally speaking, people become writers because they were the really good, really cool, attractive kid in class. I'll be honest. This is our revenge for people who were much better looking and more popular than us. I was a bit like that, I suppose.

I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.

I think of myself as a writer with a sense of humour rather than a comedy writer. Happy to tell a story with lots of jokes in it - I wouldn't know how to do jokes without the story.

I was called a misogynist because I was reducing women to mothers. 'Reducing women to mothers' - now there is possibly the most anti-women statement I've heard.

My problem is that the audience is more fiction-literate than ever. In Shakespeare's day, you probably expected to see a play once or twice in your life; today you experience four or five different kinds of fiction every day. So staying ahead of the audience is impossible.

People don't really have a relationship with great writing or great production or great art direction or great direction. They just sort of admire it.

The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.

The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It's easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer.

When writing comedy, you have to have the confidence to believe that there is only one type of relationship in the world, and we are all having it, that all men behave in the same way and so do all women.

When you're surrounded by friends and exes, there's a whole lot of stuff that starts crawling out. But however serious and traumatic those experiences may be to the participant, to the onlooker they're hilarious.

I can say with pride verging on smugness that I've got two very successful shows that assume their audience is very smart.

Writing for adults often means just increasing the swearing - but find an alternative to swearing and you've probably got a better line.

Being the only writer on a successful show is very rewarding.

Brainy's the new sexy.

Cinema is so slow and boring compared to television.

Fascinatingly confident, rude people are great.

I always tend to favor the newer idea.

I can't see what's wrong about assuming intelligence in your audience and what's bad news about being rewarded for assuming that.

I don't want to think that the stories are finite; I want to feel that they can go on forever.

I hope I won't become hated by geeks everywhere, but I don't really know comic books all that well.