Steven Moffat Quotes

When you're surrounded by friends and exes, there's a whole lot of stuff that starts crawling out. But however serious and traumatic those experiences may be to the participant, to the onlooker they're hilarious.

- Steven Moffat

I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.

- Steven Moffat

Well, I'm permitted to say anything I like. I just don't.

- Steven Moffat

If you take most men aside when their wives are pregnant, most men are pretty frightened and worried and faintly disgusted by the whole experience.

- Steven Moffat

I hope I won't become hated by geeks everywhere, but I don't really know comic books all that well.

- Steven Moffat

I was called a misogynist because I was reducing women to mothers. 'Reducing women to mothers' - now there is possibly the most anti-women statement I've heard.

- Steven Moffat

The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It's easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer.

- Steven Moffat

I think of myself as a writer with a sense of humour rather than a comedy writer. Happy to tell a story with lots of jokes in it - I wouldn't know how to do jokes without the story.

- Steven Moffat

I can say with pride verging on smugness that I've got two very successful shows that assume their audience is very smart.

- Steven Moffat

I can't see what's wrong about assuming intelligence in your audience and what's bad news about being rewarded for assuming that.

- Steven Moffat

To me, a 'brand' sounds evil.

- Steven Moffat

I think training in comedy, as it were, a history writing comedy, is a powerful tool for anyone.

- Steven Moffat

The difference between a beautifully made failure and a beautifully made hit is who you've got playing the leads.

- Steven Moffat

I don't think, generally speaking, people become writers because they were the really good, really cool, attractive kid in class. I'll be honest. This is our revenge for people who were much better looking and more popular than us. I was a bit like that, I suppose.

- Steven Moffat

When writing comedy, you have to have the confidence to believe that there is only one type of relationship in the world, and we are all having it, that all men behave in the same way and so do all women.

- Steven Moffat

I'm a geek.

- Steven Moffat

My problem is that the audience is more fiction-literate than ever. In Shakespeare's day, you probably expected to see a play once or twice in your life; today you experience four or five different kinds of fiction every day. So staying ahead of the audience is impossible.

- Steven Moffat

Writing for adults often means just increasing the swearing - but find an alternative to swearing and you've probably got a better line.

- Steven Moffat

Cinema is so slow and boring compared to television.

- Steven Moffat

Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.

- Steven Moffat

Fascinatingly confident, rude people are great.

- Steven Moffat

I don't want to think that the stories are finite; I want to feel that they can go on forever.

- Steven Moffat

If anyone said to me 'invent a new monster so we can sell more toys', I'd kick them out of my office.

- Steven Moffat

The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.

- Steven Moffat

I never go online. The Internet stuff is bonkers. You must not look at it.

- Steven Moffat

My priorities are where they should be, which is making really great, really exciting television.

- Steven Moffat

If you don't expect to like someone and then you do, that's an incredibly exciting moment.

- Steven Moffat

I always tend to favor the newer idea.

- Steven Moffat

Nothing can ever be a rule in drama, because then you're saying certain things won't ever happen, and that would be very boring.

- Steven Moffat

People don't really have a relationship with great writing or great production or great art direction or great direction. They just sort of admire it.

- Steven Moffat

Being the only writer on a successful show is very rewarding.

- Steven Moffat

I absolutely love television, and I don't mean to be vulgar, but as I keep having to explain to people from the movie industry, I get more power and more money doing television, so why on earth would I do a film?

- Steven Moffat

You'll go out of business if you think people are stupid.

- Steven Moffat

Brainy's the new sexy.

- Steven Moffat