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" I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified. "

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" You're either a person with a conscience, or you're not. I think I've got quite a fine conscience. "

" Robert Bolt's storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to. "

" You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There is something fantastically post-modern about David Frost. "

" I can't relax when I'm watching a biographical drama because it's so close to what it is that I do that I just long for more fiction - so that I can switch off. "

" There's something about the soul of a country that is somehow connected to the head of state. "

" For a younger generation to imagine a time where there was no security at airports - going around the world in the bar of a jumbo jet, 'Tell the plane to wait, I'm running late!' - there is something very Austin Powers about David Frost, a man who, in all seriousness, would approach women in a safari suit, with sideburns. "

" If you start to analyze what you do, it can paralyze you. "

" You can't ask someone to act middle-aged. Someone has to bring their own fatigue to it. "

" I can't imagine anyone thinking, 'Oh good, it's awards season!' "

" 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. "

" People bang on all the time about whether what I've done is the truth or not. Well, to me, history is just a series of elaborate fictions. "

" For 'Frost/Nixon,' I had eight people who were present at those interviews - they were all in the room - and when I interviewed each of them, they had a totally different narrative of events, to the degree where you thought, 'Were you all really in the same room?' "

" Belief in God is so deranged that it makes absolutely no sense, but it holds people together somehow. "

" As a European from a different, younger generation, the trauma that was Nixon's presidency never really had a hold over me. For one thing, I never voted for him. "

" If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative. "

" Generally, I read nonfiction. There's very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy. "

" Self-destruction is such an interesting thing for a dramatist, and what's particular to Nixon is how human the failings were that led to his downfall. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Ambition interests me because it's such a surefire indicator of damage. "

" I think I stumbled upon a voice people associate with me with 'The Deal.' "

" Once I start writing about somebody, I become very protective of them. "

" As a dramatist, you have 200 choices at every fork in the road. But the audience will reject it if you make the wrong choice, if they feel you are trying to shape the character in a way that suits you. It rings false immediately. People can sense when you're being cynical or schematic. "

" Sometimes it's okay for an audience not to understand everything that's going on. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I wrote a draft of 'Playboy' for Warner Brothers, and it was impossible to really be independent of Hugh Hefner. In the end, Hugh Hefner was unable to take the back seat required to be able to write something about him that I felt I could do. "