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" 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. "

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" It is a fairly serious thing that you're doing if you're writing about people who are still alive and who still have a role in public life. Sometimes you don't want to be reminded too much of the responsibility. "

" In a way, I think of the press as my colleagues. I don't want to throw hand grenades at people who do something that's pretty similar to what I do. But at the same time, we all need to take ourselves seriously and be responsible as professionals. And there was a collective failure in the treatment of Christopher Jefferies. "

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

" 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 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. "

" No family is complete without an embarrassing uncle. "

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

" 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. "

" The films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on forgiveness. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" In some shape or form, we do have an emotional connection to our head of state, even if, for the most part, they seem very remote. "

" I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it. "

" 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?' "

" I'm constantly having to check my conscience about what I'm writing and the responsibility of what I'm saying. "

" 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. "

" Most historians are engaged in fiction. "

" I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" By nature of the job, most actors are striking, remarkable, and alpha. "

" It's important to me what the viewers think. "

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

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

" I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people. "