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

The Doctor: Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink.

Sarah Jane Smith was everybody's hero when I was younger, and as brave and funny and brilliant as people only ever are in stories. But many years later, when I met the real Sarah Jane - Lis Sladen herself - she was exactly as any child ever have wanted her to be. Kind and gentle and clever; and a ferociously talented actress, of course, but in that perfectly English unassuming way.

Always take a banana to a party.

What is immutable about Sherlock Holmes? He favors reason over emotion, but actually underneath that, there is a lot of emotion going on. You can't suddenly make him ordinary because he would hate that. He's not suddenly going to be somebody else.

There's something really cool about scaring children. Traumatize a generation, that's what it's all about.

Cinema is so slow and boring compared to television.