Quotes from Julia Davis

I think most people, including me, like to read gossipy things about others: revealing things that I love to read but I don't really want known about me.

I do use a laptop, but I'm very technophobic. I've never downloaded anything. I've never bought anything on Amazon. I'm really ridiculous. I don't know what it is.

You have to be enough of a parent - you have to be there. If I'm feeling bad, I really do just have to get on with it and try and channel it back into my work somehow, do something positive with it.

If I can laugh with people, it makes me feel safe with them. If I feel someone has no sense of humour, I find it really scary. I do it with the kids as well: put on stupid voices to lighten up the spirit or gee them along to do something.

The main thing is to believe writers know what their voices are, and if they are left alone, they will come through with something. There are a load of brilliant U.S. comedies: at the moment, I'm loving 'Girls.' People say the U.S. is more conservative; I think, actually, it is a bit looser here, but trends change.

A lot of my comedy is to do with being angry, then finding a way to channel that.

I love watching programmes about food. I always think, 'When I'm old, I'll take up baking.' There's something calming about watching the recipe and thinking, 'I'm going to make that' - and it's never going to happen.

I'm sure all parents think their kids are funny, and I'm sure a lot of kids are, whether their parents are comics or not.

To me, if something makes you laugh, that's heart-warming. It doesn't necessarily have to be friendly; it might just be the weirdest thing ever. Laughing makes me feel better.

My desktop is really chaotic, and I'm always trying to work out where I am going to put all these ideas.

I love all Daphne du Maurier's stuff. And just enjoying period dramas, really... wanting to do something drastically different from 'Nighty Night', the chance to write very different language.

I just find it funny and terrible: someone being very rude and overbearing over somebody who doesn't know how to deal with it. Maybe it's because I've experienced that sort of thing and I don't know how to say, 'You can't do that. You can't say that to me.'

If I claim I'm the opposite of my characters, then it'll just sound awful. But I tend to write the sort of things I'd never say because I'm not a very forceful person.

I think I am generally prone to exaggerating characters, taking them to a ridiculous extent. But you do also meet those people in real life who are just really awful.

I do think, with people in comedy, you can have your time, as it were, and then you don't realise that it might have gone. I hope it hasn't for me. I think what I do is, I just... I just try to plough my own furrow, in a way.

I'm quite tactful, actually. I worry about whether people are all right. With my friends, obviously, conversations are quite free and uncensored, but I would never enjoy making someone feel uncomfortable at all.

As a child, I just found a lot of things quite difficult. I found school quite overwhelming. There were just too many people. I wish I could have gone to a school with about five people. And if I saw someone bullying someone else, for example - I don't mean because I'm a perfect person, because I'm really not - but I'd always be, 'Well, why?'

With 'Nighty Night' series one, Oprah Winfrey's channel took it on, so she must have liked it.

I love the spiritual side of religion, but the church, for me, is a place where I feel very repressed.

I'd love to do more 'Nighty Night,' but that's always down to commissions, really. It's weird as well because everyone's moved on. I don't know if I could get all those people back.

People who know my track record know when I've got a vision in mind, I'll see it through. But sometimes it's hard to convey what you're trying to achieve.

I think my dad has a similar black sense of humour to mine, so perhaps it's just an inherited thing. I've got two little boys now, and I can see it with them as well. I don't know if you learn it off your parents - but my dad used to take me to see certain plays when I was quite young, so maybe that had an effect as well.

People could write stuff that's really offensive, but if it's written within a believable world that has a tone to it, then it can be funny. But if it's just shock-value stuff, then it's not going to work, because it's not coming from a true place.

I sometimes write in a cafe down the road from my house now because I feel guilty trying to work if I can hear them playing. I invariably end up sat in a corner, depressed, retreating into my own world.