Quotes By Steven Moffat

Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.

Cinema is so slow and boring compared to television.

I absolutely love television, and I don't mean to be vulgar, but as I keep having to explain to people from the movie industry, I get more power and more money doing television, so why on earth would I do a film?

To me, a 'brand' sounds evil.

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 write the kind of stuff I'd like to watch.

You'll go out of business if you think people are stupid.

I always tend to favor the newer idea.

The difference between a beautifully made failure and a beautifully made hit is who you've got playing the leads.

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.

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.

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 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.

I'm a geek.

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.

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

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

If anyone said to me 'invent a new monster so we can sell more toys', I'd kick them out of my office.

Fascinatingly confident, rude people are great.

I think training in comedy, as it were, a history writing comedy, is a powerful tool for anyone.

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.

Nothing can ever be a rule in drama, because then you're saying certain things won't ever happen, and that would be very boring.

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

If you don't expect to like someone and then you do, that's an incredibly exciting moment.

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

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.

My priorities are where they should be, which is making really great, really exciting television.

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.

Brainy's the new sexy.

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