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.

You don't want to take over the universe. You wouldn't know what to do with it beyond shout at it.

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.

Reinette: One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.

You should always waste time when you don't have any. Time is not the boss of you. Rule 408.

Between the marriages, I shagged my way round television studios like a mechanical digger.

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.