Quotes from Peter Capaldi

I'm fascinated by fire. When I was four, I wore an American fireman's hat all the time, and I still have one in my office today. Glasgow used to be called 'Tinderbox City;' there were always fires, people getting killed.

Real heroes are all around us and uncelebrated.

My childhood growing up in that part of Glasgow always sounds like some kind of sub-Catherine Cookson novel of earthy working-class immigrant life, which to some extent it was, but it wasn't really as colourful that.

It was great being brought up in a Glasgow working-class tenement. It wasn't miserable, and it wasn't poverty stricken. It felt very safe, full of delights.

I could make the title of my memoirs: 'It's got cinematic disaster written all over it.'

I could never plan to have a career that went this well... you know, there were times when it didn't: when it went into the toilet, or ducked, or was difficult to get moving.

I've had very bleak experiences in hospitals, but they were also sometimes very funny.

I don't think I would have been great in the 17th century. I would have enjoyed the frocks, and certainly some of the food would have been appealing, but the disease and hygiene would have worried me.

I just consciously try to enjoy the good things that are happening. And if it ended tomorrow, that would be fine.

If you travel in time and space, most of the people you know and love will eventually be gone. But you'll also be able to go and find them again.

I love people where, at the end of the day, they'll pick up a paintbrush and paint clouds. They can physically make things.

My adolescence was a kind of motorway pile-up. I wish I had known that one day the geek would inherit the Earth.

Crime is interesting. It's huge and fascinating, and it's what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic, and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It's reduced to a chess game.

The Hollywood image of the movie business is all about ambition and high achievers like James Cameron. But the British film industry is much more about men who wear cravats and work with model trains and hope another series of 'Thomas the Tank Engine' will be commissioned.

The biggest thing I have realized was that you have to choose your collaborators very carefully, and that not everybody can like you. The process of filmmaking is so difficult, there's no point in doing it unless you can do it the way you want.

Nowadays, kids... young actors... they go straight to L.A. before they've even done anything.

The difference between movies and TV is that in TV you have to have a trauma every week, but that event may not be the biggest event in the characters' lives.

I was initially rather charmed by David Cameron, but I think he's revealing himself to be a slightly darker and less charismatic figure than he first appeared. There's a brutality about him.

Everywhere I go, I am The Doctor, and everyone smiles at me - they are pleased to see Doctor Who, who's far more exciting than I am.

Shouting at people keeps you alive, healthy, young, fresh.

It seems to me that most things that are being made are designed for young people. There aren't that many depictions of melancholic older people, even though they form a growing proportion of the population.

I'm sure if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be doing classic guitar solos on YouTube.

I think the truth is always interesting, but with politicians, you don't get to see much of that.

The truth is that I got to Hollywood, and I didn't know what to do once I got there.