Quotes from Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Having full faith that you can write something completely insane, and your actress will ground it and make it feel real, is a very liberating feeling.

You don't often see a cross section of female characters interacting with each other at the top of a chain.

'Transparent' was huge for me when I first saw it. I felt that, from an authorial point of view, no one was trying to sell characters to us, you know? It's the idea of not having to adore these characters and want to cuddle them; you just have to be into them and their psychology and be compelled by them.

I know actors who say acting is acting, but I love the live-ness of an audience. I love feeling the energy of a room and allowing them to sort of teach you how to do it better.

Fleabag knows men and women are equal and should be treated as such, but what she's confused about - and what I was confused about - was the idea that wanting bigger boobs doesn't mean you don't want equal rights.

Nothing brings me more joy than when people love what I do.

I just kind of like to feel myself into stuff by writing scenes and seeing what characters end up saying.

I don't think the challenge is asking an audience to like a character; it's inviting them to try and understand them... then making that journey entertaining and worth their while. It's a classic trick, but it's human, and it allows characters to have more depth.

I always knew that if I was ever going to perform something that I wrote in front of an audience, I was going to do the thing I most like to experience as an audience member, which is to be tricked.

However much people want to politicize every movement of a controversial woman in life or on the screen, we just have to keep being personal and truthful, or we will explode.

The joy and the pain for me is about tightroping between being a cynic and being a romantic - the tug between barely believing in anything and hoping for everything.

I'd been waiting to turn thirty my whole life. For some reason, when I was eleven, I was like, 'I know thirty's going to be good. Get through those twenties!'

I'd like to think Fleabag's honesty makes her heroic in spite of her actions.

As women, we get the message about how to be a good girl - how to be a good, pretty girl - from such an early age. Then, at the same time, we're told that well-behaved girls won't change the world or ever make a splash.

I've been so obsessed with 'Game of Thrones,' and there's so much about nobility and duty that I think about a lot.

If you hear somebody say something absolutely horrendous about their own life, in quite a flippant, offbeat kind of way, when you meet people clearly trying to be strong and brave, the ones who are really good at it are the ones who break my heart the most.

What's so useful about the British culture of politeness is the level of passive aggression is really fun to write.

Wouldn't it be exciting if all women just went on strike? Just a woman's strike. Everything would fall apart pretty quickly then, wouldn't it?

I'm just constantly on the verge of bursting into tears with joy.

I've always wanted to work for, like, "Assume your audience is cleverer than you," rather than the other way around.

Actually, my worst nightmare is losing my best friend, as I imagine most people's are.

Our family dinner table was my first platform - every dinner was all about sharing stories and jokes and points of view.

I'm obsessed with audiences and obsessed with the journey that an audience goes on.

So much TV is drawn out.