Quotes from Jesse Armstrong

Talking about satire feels like death.

I don't buy the thing that you can't do satire in the age of Trump. You just have to be funny and figure out the angles.

My writing partner and I usually write separately, because if we write together we are liable to go a little nuts. The person not at the keyboard can start to feel disenfranchised to the point that they sometimes make a lunge for that accoutrement of computer power, the mouse.

What you don't think when you sit down to write a show is, 'How can I be shocking?' That question isn't interesting, it's all about, 'Is this funny, does it work?'

You have to be careful. You have to be able to stand behind what you write and believe in it.

Almost anyone can give me the willies. Man or woman, Asian, black or white, young or old.

Why do I bother having all my stupid opinions? I mean, really, my ever evolving Balkan policy of the mid-1990s - what did I think was going to happen? That I was going to be supersubbed out of Oddbins and into the Foreign Office?

There's loads of succession stories to draw on.

Succession moments are always dangerous for democracies.

The writers' room is an open forum where anything mad or weird that aggressively shakes up the show can be suggested and considered.

You've got to trust the audience, and hopefully if you do interesting work you'll get an audience that are interested and engaged. But if they go out thinking, 'Ra-ra-ra, I wanna be like Malcolm Tucker,' then at a certain point you can't take responsibility for that person. That person's just a moron.

I wouldn't like to say I'm a class warrior.

Getting under the surface of real-life humans' poker faces humans is hard in a sitcom, even a drama.

Roy Chubby Brown's offensive material is disgusting to me, an offensive beating-down of people who have already been beaten down plenty, culturally and historically.

Political parties can be pretty internecine, and pretty savage.

I guess Trump is gone, but the shape that he gave to the American political and social environment - that still resonates. There's a certain amount of post-traumatic stress in America about the possibilities of what could have happened, and what people still feel did happen.

I never got to see inside No 10, but I did once go to Ann Widdecombe's ministerial office under the Commons where she sat framed by two posters on her wall, one featuring a Technicolor foetus in an anti-abortion message, the other Garfield the Cat wryly musing, 'The Diet Starts... Tomorrow.'

Everyone has tacit levels of trust, don't we? In every interaction that takes place in our professional and personal lives we have boundaries that we sort of trust the other person not to breach.

One of the things that strikes me when I've read about these families - whether it be the Maxwells or the Redstones or the Julio-Claudians - is that, when you get that combination of money, power, and family relations, things get so complicated that you can justify actions to yourself that are pretty unhealthy to your well-being as a human being.

Because Oswestry is very much an Anglo-Welsh mix it can lead you to feeling a bit bipolar sometimes. I mean, you're in England but there's plenty of Welsh accents to be heard, lots of Welsh-speaking chapels dotted around the place and, on market day, the place would be overrun with farmers from over the border.

All powerful people make foolish decisions and end up in humiliating and embarrassing situations, as well as wielding their power.

I do think it's really tough being super-rich, really hard-working and wanting to get some sort of immortality by passing on the organisation to your kids. But then looking at your kids and thinking, 'Oh, they're just these privileged people who haven't had to struggle. Am I really going to just give it all to them?'

I can just about enjoy it. There is an initial hurdle, where I feel like, oh goodness me, I'm going to watch a sitcom or a drama and it's my competition. But luckily quality tends to override that, so when I have been watching 'Him and Her' or 'Girls' or any of the shows I admire, you simply enjoy them.

Hit shows are very difficult to achieve. You need to have everything just right - that's what's so terrifying.