“I was a novelist before I was a TV screenwriter. Actually, as a kid, I think I’d always wanted to be a writer, but never thought that I would be one.”

Sci-fi is very much an American genre. Space and the exploration of space is something so closely associated with America.

I’m not into politics. I’m into survival.

I’m not from a particularly sci-fi background. I’m not anti sci-fi at all, but I’ve never been known as a sci-fi writer and, suddenly, I was creating a flagship BBC sci-fi show, which is terrifying sometimes.

The stronger a brand’s point of view, the greater its voltage.

The best content is the means, not the end.

Just because there’s a trillion places to put an idea doesn’t mean you don’t need an idea in the first place

I wrote about the life of a housing officer in Britain, in a pretty rough area of London. Maybe it was because I’m a big-mouth and an exhibitionist, and I’m slightly egotistical. All those things have to come together for a writer.