Quotes from Jesse Armstrong

The best bit about having a collaborator is plot. Plot is quite hard to get right. It is a testing intellectual exercise that feels quite different to being in the flow of voice or characterisation. I like having someone to construct a plot with.

We have characteristics we're born with, that are molded by the lives we live. And so to have a psychologically engaged show, our view of human nature is that it doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from somewhere.

We always knew that we could write what it's like to be men together, bickering, but also having this fondness.

If you're making a satirical show and you're aiming to change something, I'd say you're on a fool's errand.

With an unscripted take, you let the thing live and bring an extra level of life to the performance. Sometimes you get extra jokes because the actors are super smart and see a funnier or more true way to go with the scene.

Kids are as discerning as adults, if anything they are quicker and clearer in knowing what they like.

Who has not stared at the blank page and not been able to think of anything to write for what at least felt like six months? Getting started is the hardest bit, obviously.

You can't control how things that you're involved with are received. But 'The Thick of It' wasn't intended as an instruction manual. Writers like hearing how bits of this stuff have got out into the world - but it was not meant to be a joyful celebration of the way these people behave.

I'm in the game of realism so happy endings probably feel a little bit too neat for life.

Red Alert' is a gripping cold war bomber-command procedural. But read now, you can see 'Dr Strangelove' - the film which took the book as source material - peeping through the gaps.

Wars are hard to look at head-on.

Wimbledon fortnight is always a testing time for the home worker. I spend most of it on the phone to my writing partner pretending to chat about character motivation when actually I'm checking if he's working - listening out for any telltale bleeps from the line-call machine off the TV in the background.

It's a good tip for writers, that - write with an actor in mind. Even if you have no hope of getting John Cleese, it's much better to write it with him in mind because you might find someone else to do that stuff; it really helps.

I'm relatively sensitive to the atmosphere of what places are like, what relationships are like, and the feeling of power in rooms.

If you have seven homes, every room is not a beautifully curated expression of your personality.

Comedy is not good for anything, really. Apart from being one of the only things that makes life worth living.

We read the financial papers and there's a ton of tech and media mergers and acquisitions we're likely to take inspiration from.

Character is key. Once you've got that voice going, everything else can follow. If you've also got the right tone, you're in the right area - an inconsistent tone can screw up a project.

My daughter, who says 'Horrible Histories' is her favourite programme, gets that the tone is sophisticated and that it takes children seriously. It doesn't talk down to them.

I guess I'm interested in politics - I'm interested in ideas and ideology.

It's touching that people only think there's one of these around. Dynastic families are all around us.

Oswestry's a bit in the middle of nowhere - quite tough, and quite English, in the way border towns are.

Between 1995 and 1997 I was a researcher for a Labour MP. And looking back I realise I wasn't a very good one.

Hanging around a lot of really intelligent people for months on end, talking about whatever's in the news, is fun to me.