Nothing brings me more joy than when people love what I do.
Phoebe 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.
Our family dinner table was my first platform - every dinner was all about sharing stories and jokes and points of view.
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.
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?'
I always want to go darker, and I'm always being advised to stay on the lighter side.
Women know what they're doing all the time, and they're pretending that they don't.
Every time I see the rails of my photo shoots, it's like Dr. Seuss, or as if they've skinned Muppets.
There's nothing that makes me cry and laugh more than stories about friendship.
I really, really wanted to write about just female relationships with other females and things.
I always knew that saying the unsayable was going to be a powerful thing.
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 remember being a teenager and saying, 'Oh, I want to be an actress when I grow up.' And people saying, 'You need to be a good liar - are you a good liar?'
I feel liberated being around women who are liberated.
I'll never get bored of seeing flawed women on the screen.
After the play of 'Fleabag,' we had conversations with different channels and with film companies about whether 'Fleabag' should be a half-hour sitcom, an hourlong, serialized drama, or a film. And I knew that it couldn't be a drama because I wanted to hide the drama - that had to be the surprise. I knew it had to be comedy.
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.
I think there's something funny about people who laugh in the face of convention or surprise us morally.
Sausages are just funny. I don't know why. I can't explain it.
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.
It will always be relevant and always be inspiring to see somebody turning themselves into a warrior.
Every single performance of 'Fleabag,' I would learn so much from the audience reaction or how you could change it all the time, and I loved that sense that the performance is ever-growing and changing and could be affected by the audience.
I think if you've got people on your side, if you've got people really laughing, you are able to make them cry.
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.
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.
I just find all that stuff incredibly funny. I love a fart. I'd do anything for a good poo story.
I'm just constantly on the verge of bursting into tears with joy.
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.
You have to make an audience feel like they can - and want to - change something about what they are watching. And that might be the thing that galvanises them in the end, that makes them come out of themselves and say, 'No! Don't do that!'
People generally are just really nice to each other. You know, the good people.
I'm obsessed with audiences and obsessed with the journey that an audience goes on.
I had such a supportive family, and I think that affects your life in such a profound way; it fortifies you completely.
To me, most comedy is dark comedy.
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.
I don't think there's an actor in the world who ever expects to get a call from the 'Star Wars' casting director - least of all me.
The main relationship in the whole series was the one between the camera and Fleabag. I had to convince myself that whoever was watching on the other side of the camera was instantly complicit with Fleabag and instantly a friend of hers.
We're just so self-conscious. However much we try not to be, on some level, especially as a woman and an actress, you have so much pressure when it comes your hair and the bags under your eyes and your skin.
The idea of losing your best friend, basically, is the worst thing in world.
I wanted to give people that feeling of wanting to hug the TV and just admit that you're unhappy.
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.
I think audiences can feel when they're being served a filler episode.
So much TV is drawn out.
The #MeToo and Time's Up movements have been a roar on behalf of women, and the voices are genuinely empowered now. I really feel that.
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.
You're allowed to bore your friends and family, but to bore your audience is unforgivable.
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.
I really desperately want to write and direct my own movie.
I think it helped that 'Fleabag' had such a dramatic arc to it, even though it was disguised as a comedy.
I'm a massive control freak.
