I'm terribly nostalgic, but I'm with the Elizabethans who thought nostalgia was a disease. It's a dangerous place to be because you can get caught up in it.

That's what makes characters interesting. If Sherlock [Holmes] had started out being a straightforward man, we wouldn't be talking about him now. If he became one, that would be interesting. But you have to give him somewhere to go, as [Conan] Doyle did.

I love the Shakespeare history plays, I love the struggle for the crown as a plot.

I always compare reading anything on the Internet to listening at doors. If you don't want to hear anything bad about yourself, you should never do it.

At school I briefly wanted to be a palaeontologist, but I was no good at chemistry and physics.

I had a girlfriend before I ever had a boyfriend, but it was just a phase.

When I was your age — about, ooh, a thousand years ago — I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics.