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" 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. "

Peter Morgan

Impossible

End

Independent

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" I don't think of the crown as this glamorous thing. It's this murderous, bejeweled thing, the crown. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I'm not an artist, and I want to take risks, and when the possibility of failure occurs, it's because the idea is all exciting or interesting as a high wire act, and sometimes you've got to fall off, just by virtue of the fact that you're constantly trying to evolve and do new things. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

Peter Morgan

Lights

Reading

" 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. "

Peter Morgan

Smile

Understanding

" 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 make a point of not reading reviews because of the old adage, if you read the good ones then you have to read the bad ones, and if you read the bad ones, you have to, you know... And also because it's a very, very bewildering and exposing thing. "

" I have a great deal of compassion for those in public life and what we have done to them. "

" 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. "

" There are many, many things in my work that need redoing - never the structure. "

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

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

" 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. "

Peter Morgan

People

History

" 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. "

Peter Morgan

After

Insolent

" I am drawn to characters so full of internal contradictions. Idi Amin was one. I loved writing him. "

" Some of the things I have written about are a way of connecting with my father - I know he knew who Idi Amin was, and I know he knew who Longford was. And I know he knew who Nixon was, because shortly before he died, I talked to him about Watergate. "

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

" 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. "

Peter Morgan

Understanding

Story

" In my peaceful moments, I yearn to write a bank heist like the one in 'Heat.' "

Peter Morgan

Heat

Peaceful

" 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. "

" Sometimes if biography is too head-on, it can feel too obvious. "

" If you don't belong somewhere, that outsider status you have gives you perspective. Of course, another word for outsider is 'exile,' and that's not fun at all. "