Waller-Bridge: "I don't think you can be a good actor and want to please, because so much about performing and acting is surprising people."

Waller-Bridge: "I change my mind every five minutes. I'm very brutal with my own process. I throw everything away very quickly, and then I have to go out and rummage through the rubbish in the middle of the night to try to find a bit I'd written a week ago."

Waller-Bridge: "I always knew that saying the unsayable was going to be a powerful thing."

Waller-Bridge: "I just love any kind of language that can change the energy in a room. There are no limits for me, as long as it feels like it's being used in a particular way to garner or elicit a very particular reaction so that you can then use that reaction later for something else."

Waller-Bridge: "I think there's something funny about people who laugh in the face of convention or surprise us morally."

Waller-Bridge: "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."

Waller-Bridge: "I always want to go darker, and I'm always being advised to stay on the lighter side."

Waller-Bridge: "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."

Waller-Bridge: "I'm just constantly on the verge of bursting into tears with joy."

Waller-Bridge: "The element of surprise is the most important thing and what keeps me interested in writing. I can feel it if I've written that predictable or boring line, and I will carry that around with me all day."

Waller-Bridge: "To me, most comedy is dark comedy."

Waller-Bridge: "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."

Waller-Bridge: "I'm a massive control freak."

Waller-Bridge: "If you go into the mainstream with a female perspective that seems to resonate with a lot of people, you have a political agenda imposed on you: you are told that you are a feminist."

Waller-Bridge: "You're allowed to bore your friends and family, but to bore your audience is unforgivable."

Waller-Bridge: "Whenever I get stuck on something, I'm like, 'What would I do if I wasn't afraid? What would I write if I wasn't afraid? What would I say in this situation if I wasn't afraid?'"

Waller-Bridge: "I suppose the cult of the strong woman character on TV has probably been misinterpreted in so many different ways, meaning that a woman can't be emotionally complicated or want things or can't be weak in moments."

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

Waller-Bridge: "I think it's part of human nature, that we want to achieve. It's definitely a kind of cosmopolitan nature, wanting to achieve in the fast lane."

Waller-Bridge: "Nothing brings me more joy than when people love what I do."

Waller-Bridge: "When an audience is laughing with a character, they make themselves so vulnerable, and they open up. They expose their heart the moment they're laughing, because they're relaxed and they're disarmed."

Waller-Bridge: "I think if you've got people on your side, if you've got people really laughing, you are able to make them cry."

Waller-Bridge: "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."

Waller-Bridge: "I'd go so far as to say I was bullied into writing, but sometimes you need that."

Waller-Bridge: "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."

Waller-Bridge: "Sausages are just funny. I don't know why. I can't explain it."

Waller-Bridge: "People are always trying to be on top. And not always with a macabre agenda, but I think that people are desperately trying to remain in control, rather than being honest."

Waller-Bridge: "I just find all that stuff incredibly funny. I love a fart. I'd do anything for a good poo story."