Top 100 Steven Moffat Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “We all change, when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s OK, that’s good, you gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.”

— Steven Moffat

52. “I always tend to favor the newer idea.”

— Steven Moffat

53. “To me, a ‘brand’ sounds evil.”

— Steven Moffat

54. “I don’t want to think that the stories are finite; I want to feel that they can go on forever.”

— Steven Moffat

55. “So is this how it works Doctor? You never interfere with the affairs of other peoples or planets, unless there are children crying?”

— Steven Moffat

56. “The Doctor: I’ve seen bigger. Clara: Really? The Doctor: Are you joking? It’s massive!”

— Steven Moffat

57. “Everything ends and it’s always sad, but everything begins again, too. And that’s always happy. Be happy. – Return of Doctor Mysterio.”

— Steven Moffat

58. “Los demonios huyen cuando un hombre bueno va a la guerra.”

— Steven Moffat

59. “Never trust a hug. It’s just a way to hide your face.”

— Steven Moffat

60. “River Song? Amy Pond? Hardly weak women. It’s the exact opposite. You could accuse me of having a fetish for powerful, sexy women who like cheating people. That would be fair.”

— Steven Moffat

61. “Keep this straight in your head: we are not fighting an alien invasion we’re leading a revolution. And today the battle begins.”

— Steven Moffat

62. “It’s been a long time since Sherlock Holmes jumped off that roof – it’s time to reveal the truth about what happened between him and the pavement.”

— Steven Moffat

63. “Maybe I’m in Hell. That’s okay, I’m not scared of Hell – it’s just Heaven for bad people.”

— Steven Moffat

64. “Stories are where memories go when they are forgotten.”

— Steven Moffat

65. “Is there a word for ‘total screaming genius’ that sounds modest and a tiny bit sexy?”

— Steven Moffat

66. “Do you know how you make someone into a Dalek? Subtract Love, add Anger.”

— Steven Moffat

67. “Because every time you see them happy you remember how sad they’re going to be. And it breaks your heart. Because what’s the point in them being happy now if they’re going to be sad later. The answer is, of course, because they a re going to be sad later.”

— Steven Moffat

68. “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

69. “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

70. “I find it’s bizarre that science fiction is the one branch of television to push the idea of strong female characters. And I only call it bizarre because strong women aren’t fiction.”

— Steven Moffat

71. “I’ve finally run out of corridor. There’s a life summed up.”

— Steven Moffat

72. “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

73. “The Doctor: Don’t blink. Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And most of all, don’t blink. Good Luck.”

— Steven Moffat

74. “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

75. “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

76. “There isn’t anything that you will ever do in your life that won’t one day be described as over. That cannot tarnish the joy of it. You cannot damage the memory of your greatest days with the regret that they’re over. That’s the wrong way to think.”

— Steven Moffat

77. “If you don’t expect to like someone and then you do, that’s an incredibly exciting moment.”

— Steven Moffat

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

— Steven Moffat

79. “I don’t know. I can’t tell the future I just work there.”

— Steven Moffat

80. “There are two events in everybody’s life that nobody remembers. Two moments experienced by every living thing. Yet no one remembers anything about them. Nobody remembers being born and nobody remembers dying. Is that why we always stare into the eye sockets of a skull? Because we’re asking, “What was it like?” “Does it hurt?” “Are you still scared?”.”

— Steven Moffat

81. “Sometimes he missed the monochrome world of his first two incarnations. It had felt like a simpler, cleaner time; so many centuries had passed before he realised he’d just been colour blind.”

— Steven Moffat

82. “You can be as beautiful and charming as you’d like, but if you’re not terrific at acting, it will mean nothing on the screen.”

— Steven Moffat

83. “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

84. “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

85. “Don’t be Lasagne – The Doctor.”

— Steven Moffat

86. “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

87. “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

88. “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

89. “The difference between a beautifully made failure and a beautifully made hit is who you’ve got playing the leads.”

— Steven Moffat

90. “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

91. “Maybe he’ll visit tomorrow,’ she had said, her hand tight on his. ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he had smiled, closing his eyes. She could never decide, over the years, if those were the best or the saddest last words.”

— Steven Moffat

92. “Time travel. One-man time travel, basically. Pop the strap on your wrist, and off you go. Top security rating of any item here – no one can know we have this, not even our allies.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Are you serious? Americans with the ability to rewrite history? You’ve seen their news coverage.”

— Steven Moffat

93. “Fear is only a disadvantage if you want to attack-it’s brilliant if all you want to do is run away.”

— Steven Moffat

94. “I said we’re not the same. Here’s why. All my life, every day, I’ve wished I was someone else. I’ve wanted to be Kate, or Sarah Jane Smith, or Amy Pond, or anyone really. But you’re a shape-shifter, you’ve been lots of other people – and you want to be me. I think that makes you a much better Petronella Osgood than I am. I think I’d like to be a better version. If.”

— Steven Moffat

95. “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

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

— Steven Moffat

97. “You’ll go out of business if you think people are stupid.”

— Steven Moffat

98. “Amy: I had something I wanted to tell him. Stuff always gets in the way. Canton: Stuff does that.”

— Steven Moffat

99. “As we all know, it is the proper duty of every British subject to come to the aid of the TARDIS.”

— Steven Moffat

100. “Even the slash fiction, that’s a great way to learn to work. No one really does three-act structure, but just trying to put words that make somebody else turned on, that’s going to teach you more about writing than any writing college you can go to.”

— Steven Moffat