Michaela Coel

“Where I grew up, in Aldgate, east London, one of the poorest boroughs in the country, I saw lots that was real - the bankers with their briefcases, the man next door with five wives, the illegal immigrants in Flat 5. I'm from a world you rarely see on screen, and I want to show it off.”

“The environment on the 'Chewing Gum' set is where everyone can work to the best of their abilities and everyone is happy. So, if I'm not happy with something, I've learnt that you don't start flailing about; you go in quietly, and there's a conversation.”

“Socialisation is not optional. It's an inescapable contract, and our birth into the world is our signature of agreement. Norms and ideologies vary from society to society, and most of them weren't formed during our lifetimes but were handed down from one generation to the next.”

“I believe there are some great things that I've taken from the Bible in terms of loving the world and trying to be kind. There are a lot of good things to take from the Bible, and I like to think I try to apply them to my life.”

“I was very unhappy at one point and dealt with my unhappiness by hitting people.”

“At college, I became friends with this girl who was a 'cool Christian.' They did street dance, then they prayed. It became my whole world. I had Christian friends. I went to Christian parties.”

“Black isn't something I became after a car crash that I've been dealing with ever since. I'd like the colour of my skin to not be a factor in my life at all.”

“I think you just have to do you, whatever that is, and not feel like you have to be a certain way for other people to like you.”

“We can put fear of the future in front of us to block us, or behind us to drive us forward. I feel like telling all the people who look like me to start trying to write. You don't know it's possible because it's not often in front of you.”

“I'm way too honest. It can backfire.”

“I'm very rational, so sometimes I need the facts, and if I don't have the facts, then I get huffy, and I move on.”

“It was only when I went to sixth-form college that I encountered boys.”

“I don't write with this thing in the back of my head about carrying the weight of young black women on my shoulders.”

“The first time I got into astrology was being in New York. I was like, 'Oh, this is a real thing here!' Now, I'll Google what your sign is and what my sign is to see the predictions of friendship, and I find that really cool. But that's the most I know.”

“I see my shows like Gandhi, and I've got little baby Gandhis, and they are changing the world. I know that I'm a bit delusional about that, but I do think of them like Gandhi. They are not celebrities: they are like Gandhi and Mother Teresa.”

“Don't sit there and complain. Rub your hands together and figure out what to do.”

“Twitter is just full of silly little people enjoying being sarcastic and rude and mocking.”

“'Moesha' is very strong in my brain. The black women on 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' are very strong in my brain.”

“Comedy in the past hasn't spoken to women because it wasn't written by women, and male writers don't make women three-dimensional characters. Too often, women just facilitate the man's comedy: they're not crazy; they're not funny. But women are as vulgar as they are elegant, as stinky as they are smelling of eau de parfum.”

“It strikes me as odd that we've made journeys with our social conditioning in certain areas, but not in others. The world is always changing; discoveries in technology and science relentlessly expose our dearest values as fictions.”