Peter Morgan Quotes
-
Authorised royal biographers are so straitjacketed, deferential, fawning, and unadventurous that they can only be after a knighthood. Or they're completely scurrilous and insolent, like Andrew Morton or Paul Burrell.
-
There's something about the soul of a country that is somehow connected to the head of state.
-
Nixon had lists upon lists upon lists. They were tragic lists saying, 'Smile more,' or, 'Be stronger - remember, it is your job to spiritually uplift the nation.' This understanding of his limitations is heartbreaking.
-
It's madness to hand in a script to a director, leave them alone, and for the director not to want the writer there with rehearsals and the shoot.
-
There's nothing wrong with anybody from any other country having a perspective on the British royal family. It would be interesting. But I just doubt that they would get the dialogue right.
-
As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.
-
There is something fantastically post-modern about David Frost.
-
Ambition interests me because it's such a surefire indicator of damage.
-
The films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on forgiveness.
-
There were a couple of things I lost sleep over with the play 'Frost/Nixon,' so I went back and addressed them a bit more in the film.
-
I'm constantly having to check my conscience about what I'm writing and the responsibility of what I'm saying.
-
There are people who are bound journalistically to a code of ethics that means they can't quote something that isn't sourced, whereas what I do is entirely unsourced. I effectively fictionalise history and yet somehow aim at a greater truth.
-
I do have an innate understanding of where a story should or shouldn't go, in a way that I don't think can be taught.
-
Every dramatist will tell you that they know deep down what happened in the course of making that film and to what degree they took steps that were convenient and to what degree they took steps in telling their story that were dishonest. You know in your heart of hearts.
-
It is devastating, losing a parent. I don't really know what the effect is, but I suppose people might call me an ambitious man, and I'd say that an ambitious man is a damaged man.
-
I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.
-
There are many, many things in my work that need redoing - never the structure.
-
My experience is, I do a table reading, and it's literally like it's written in colossal neon lights what's wrong with the screenplay.
-
I just feel that if I'm English and writing about an American president, I have got to have someone on my side who can help me out when I'm lapsing into lazy or obvious European skepticism.
-
The film 'The Queen' came about with a producer saying to me that he wanted me to write about the circumstances behind Diana's death. I think he was hoping that I would come up with some journalistic scoop that would identify an MI5 covert plot.
-
Sometimes it's okay for an audience not to understand everything that's going on.
-
I quite like the idea - just as an abstract idea - of 12 people's collective life experience and wisdom being this formidable thing. People say juries can be led - I think 12 people from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, different ages, it's hard to hoodwink.
-
I'm quick to be upset. My feelings are close to the surface. There is not much gap between a thought and a feeling with me. It makes it difficult for some people. I feel too much.
-
I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.