Writing isn't just a job that stops at six thirty... It's a mad, sexy, sad, scary, ruthless, joyful, and utterly, utterly personal thing. There's not the writer and then me; there's just me. All of my life connects to the writing. All of it.

I saw the Fall of Troy! World War Five! I was pushing boxes at the Boston Tea Party! Now I'm gonna die in a dungeon.... [disgustedly] in Cardiff!

...Something we once loved, and love now, in the shape of a book. Maybe eBooks are going to take over, one day, but not until those whizzkids in Silicon Valley invent a way to bend the corners, fold the spine, yellow the pages, add a coffee ring or two and allow the plastic tablet to fall open at a favorite page.

I love having debates with people when they are debates but some people, you just can't. Some people shouldn't be given the oxygen.

Drama's not safe and it's not pretty and it's not kind. People expect the basic template of television drama where there might be naughty villains, but everyone ends up having a nice cup of tea. You've got to do big moral choices and show the terrible things people do in terrible situations. Drama is failing if it doesn't do that.

Rose Tyler: Can't you come through properly? The Doctor: Then the whole thing would fracture. The two universes would collapse. Rose Tyler: So?

...The very word 'fiction' implies another world, literally a different place, whereas no one claims that a dedicated sportsman is escaping his life, or a chef or a nurse. But the poor writer - the sci-fi one especially - is seen as running away. Bollocks. This is real, for me, and it's tough, it's fun, it's practical, and it's very, very important.