As soon as you think you can do whatever you want and you have whatever great professional in the world waiting to work with you, then you are sunk.

I always felt it is not good if you feel like you would know how to do something. I've made mistakes of telling people: I know how to do this. And it should feel dangerous. That is the only way to stay alert, to keep the adrenaline running.

We want to see drama told in a cathartic way, with power, with emotion where you empathize and then you're frightened. All those feelings charge up in you and you feel for the story.

I find my own pain and others' difficult to tolerate, so I always want to try to shift things so they'll be better. But in doing that, if I am coming from a place of ego, I often cause harm. So it's a struggle for me to set my ego outside and find a softer and more compassionate way of approaching things.

I think women assess time passage much better than men - because of their biological clocks - and they are much more realistic about measuring out time, whereas men tend to hang onto things. Women acknowledge the biology of their time, and dance through the beat of that drum...whereas men just drum.

Even though one of them is about an Edinburgh junkie and ones a little boy of eight in Manchester, you want them to always portray their world in such a vivid way that the audience can disappear inside the story.

You use elements of noir, but you don't want it to be too noir-ish. You don't want it to be advertised as though you're asking people to go and watch an updated noir. I don't think they'll go do that. They want to see a modern story.