Quotes from Jesse Armstrong

Trump is just extraordinarily unusual.

Some of the material in 'Peep Show' I wouldn't sit down and watch with even my parents, who are not easily offended.

I wouldn't defend comedy that I find offensive, but there is a lot of comedy that some people find offensive which I would defend. You can't talk usefully in generalisations.

The human propensity to having opinions must, I guess, have started as a pretty useful evolutionary tool.

There's that saying: 'No man is a hero to his valet.' It's the same between flatmates.

In my own experience with films, books, plays, TV, I don't want somebody telling me what it means, because I think I know, and I want my interpretation to be valid, because it is valid.

I started reading about media moguls in general, and Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch both made the same joke: they both were asked, 'What will happen when you die?' and they both said they didn't plan to die. It just struck me: what's going on with these men in their 80s and 90s who are still packing their diaries every day?

Writers tend to feel like outsiders.

It's sad ending 'Peep Show,' but it'll be fun starting some new shows.

Without sounding defensive, I would say that sometimes TV critics assume that after a few episodes the writers 'finally understand the characters,' and as a writer I often feel that what really has happened is that the viewer has gotten to know the characters. It's a natural process.

There are lots of great characters in fiction who viewers and readers have engaged with that behave badly. Great characters can be unfaithful. They can lie and cheat.

There's an underlying sense that your family should accord you a greater level of safety in your interactions with them. When that's violated, it's particularly brutalizing.

As a comedy writer, I work largely from home.

The camera reacts with the speed of a human being rather than somebody who knows what's going to happen next. And that lets the comedy and drama play in a way which I think subliminally makes you feel like you're in the room.

From working on heavily researched films such as 'Four Lions' and 'In the Loop,' I knew that research in itself is nothing and it's everything.