Top 70 Jesse Armstrong Quotes

We always knew that we could write what it’s like to be men together, bickering, but also having this fondness.

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

As a writer you often watch things with a certain distance.. More often, you’re worried that something that you have invented is going to become reality, and you’ll look like you copied it.

Far too interesting are times when you wake up to find that the tube line you take to work has been blown up and people you know might be dead. Not interesting enough are times when too much stuff about county cricket makes it on to the news pages.

Sitcom characters, my writing partner Sam Bain and I sometimes tell each other, are not normally self-conscious. Or not quite. The best sitcom characters are probably just a little self-conscious. Deep enough to feel pain and humiliation, but shallow enough that there are no hidden depths.

I guess Trump is gone, but the shape that he gave to the American political and social environment – that still resonates. There’s a certain amount of post-traumatic stress in America about the possibilities of what could have happened, and what people still feel did happen.

There’s loads of succession stories to draw on.

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

When you’re a nerd, you know there’s a million types of neurotic self-loathing.

If you have seven homes, every room is not a beautifully curated expression of your personality.

Character is key. Once you’ve got that voice going, everything else can follow. If you’ve also got the right tone, you’re in the right area – an inconsistent tone can screw up a project.

I’m in the game of realism so happy endings probably feel a little bit too neat for life.

We have characteristics we’re born with, that are molded by the lives we live. And so to have a psychologically engaged show, our view of human nature is that it doesn’t come from nowhere, it comes from somewhere.

I wouldn’t like to say I’m a class warrior.

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.

As a comedy writer, I work largely from home.

I don’t buy the thing that you can’t do satire in the age of Trump. You just have to be funny and figure out the angles.

If you’re on your way to meet your maker, you are not, are you, going to stop en route for a foot-long tuna sub?

Roy Chubby Brown’s offensive material is disgusting to me, an offensive beating-down of people who have already been beaten down plenty, culturally and historically.

Political parties can be pretty internecine, and pretty savage.

If you’re writing a show about modern media moguls, Rupert Murdoch and his family are an incredibly important model and some of their disputes and the dynamics have been very vivid.

I’m uncomfortable with the word satire. In the U.K., there’s quite a bit of sledgehammer weight to that word, which is the antithesis of the subtle approach I strive for.

With my writing partner, Sam Bain, I have gone on to write for lots of shows, including our co-creation ‘Peep Show,’ two series of which have been shown on Channel 4. But politics has always attracted me.

You have to be careful. You have to be able to stand behind what you write and believe in it.

There’s a reason we have a lot of pomp and ceremony around coronations and the transfer of power in democracies. It’s a scary moment. The rules aren’t clear.

Most of us now have opinions on such things as road tolling, the U.S. position on climate change, and the correct colour of a newsreader’s tie on the occasion of a state tragedy, which are way beyond the arena of things we have any control over.

Under a government committed to cutting public services to the bone, the police are often left to clean up all sorts of untidy situations that are really social work or housing, mental and physical health issues.

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

If you’re making a satirical show and you’re aiming to change something, I’d say you’re on a fool’s errand.

The truth is that when writing a TV show or a film you are a part of a team. And though you might be the architect who makes the initial drawings, somewhere along the line it all has to be given up, handed over. To the costume department and the actors, the art department, the director and the producers.

Kids are as discerning as adults, if anything they are quicker and clearer in knowing what they like.

Getting under the surface of real-life humans’ poker faces humans is hard in a sitcom, even a drama.

With an unscripted take, you let the thing live and bring an extra level of life to the performance. Sometimes you get extra jokes because the actors are super smart and see a funnier or more true way to go with the scene.

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.

Wars are hard to look at head-on.

You can’t control how things that you’re involved with are received. But ‘The Thick of It’ wasn’t intended as an instruction manual. Writers like hearing how bits of this stuff have got out into the world – but it was not meant to be a joyful celebration of the way these people behave.

Oswestry’s a bit in the middle of nowhere – quite tough, and quite English, in the way border towns are.

Succession moments are always dangerous for democracies.

Red Alert’ is a gripping cold war bomber-command procedural. But read now, you can see ‘Dr Strangelove’ – the film which took the book as source material – peeping through the gaps.

My daughter, who says ‘Horrible Histories’ is her favourite programme, gets that the tone is sophisticated and that it takes children seriously. It doesn’t talk down to them.

War isn’t funny, obviously.

We read the financial papers and there’s a ton of tech and media mergers and acquisitions we’re likely to take inspiration from.

I guess I’m interested in politics – I’m interested in ideas and ideology.

Writing a sitcom compared with writing a novel is a bit like the difference between going on a big, noisy group holiday compared with a solitary march to the South Pole.

It’s a lucky kink for comedy writers that particular English obsession and interest with class and social difference. It maybe is not good for society but it’s good for the comic writer.

So often in TV you’re looking at the monitor thinking, ‘Oh, yeah, that sort of looks a bit like that other TV show that we’re pretending to make.’

For people who come from powerful families, there is nothing in life quite as interesting as being at court.

Writers tend to feel like outsiders.

Who has not stared at the blank page and not been able to think of anything to write for what at least felt like six months? Getting started is the hardest bit, obviously.

I love the breadth and space you get to explore character in so-called serialized TV, the novelistic element of maybe being able to find out who people are. But I also very much like the sitcom discipline of having a self-contained episode that you could conceivably, I hope, be able to enjoy in and of itself.

Comedy is not good for anything, really. Apart from being one of the only things that makes life worth living.

Unlike many hour-long scripted American dramas, ‘Succession’ has very few standing sets.

Talking about satire feels like death.

I’ve always found it easy to write comedy in the area where people have strong emotions.

Between 1995 and 1997 I was a researcher for a Labour MP. And looking back I realise I wasn’t a very good one.

All powerful people make foolish decisions and end up in humiliating and embarrassing situations, as well as wielding their power.

I do think it’s really tough being super-rich, really hard-working and wanting to get some sort of immortality by passing on the organisation to your kids. But then looking at your kids and thinking, ‘Oh, they’re just these privileged people who haven’t had to struggle. Am I really going to just give it all to them?’

The Day Today’ was at least as interested in satirising form as content.

My writing partner and I usually write separately, because if we write together we are liable to go a little nuts. The person not at the keyboard can start to feel disenfranchised to the point that they sometimes make a lunge for that accoutrement of computer power, the mouse.

What you don’t think when you sit down to write a show is, ‘How can I be shocking?’ That question isn’t interesting, it’s all about, ‘Is this funny, does it work?’

The best bit about having a collaborator is plot. Plot is quite hard to get right. It is a testing intellectual exercise that feels quite different to being in the flow of voice or characterisation. I like having someone to construct a plot with.