Peter Morgan Quotes
-
When I started writing the screenplay for 'The Queen,' about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.
-
There is something fantastically post-modern about David Frost.
-
If you think about what you do, if you become self-conscious about it, you've got to be very careful. Because I really like to write without self-awareness of what I'm doing.
-
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 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.
-
There's something about the soul of a country that is somehow connected to the head of state.
-
The films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on forgiveness.
-
I insist to this day that if you read the screenplay to 'The Queen,' it leaves you in no doubt that we considered her an isolated, out-of-touch, cold, emotionally inaccessible, overprivileged, deluded woman, heading an institution that should immediately be dismantled in any free and fair society.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 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.
-
The feelings we all have as 50-year-olds are different than the feelings we all have as 30-year-olds. That informs everything we do.
-
I'm not being presumptuous, I hope, when I say that 'The Crown' is little bit like 'The Godfather.' It is essentially about a family in power and survival.
-
Ambition interests me because it's such a surefire indicator of damage.
-
As any showrunner will tell you, it is crushing work. It is around the clock. It is like a monastic commitment that you make.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.
-
If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative.
-
I'm constantly having to check my conscience about what I'm writing and the responsibility of what I'm saying.
-
I've done a lot of work in Hollywood and theatre, but to be honest, the biggest pleasure I've ever got is from the TV single plays I've written. It's a format where you don't mind saying, 'I want to tackle some important themes head on.'
-
I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it.