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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. "

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" People test movies within an inch of their life so that the entire audience experience is a uniform one. "

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

" There is no inherent contradiction between being right-wing and being intelligent. "

" 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 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 was so interesting to discover Nixon was a Californian. I always think Nixon should come from a cold place. "

" 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. "

" 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'm very happy for others to engage in conjecture, but if I was ever conscious of what I'm thinking about when I'm writing, oh my God, I'd be totally lost. "

" 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 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. "

" I watch drama on DVD because I can't stand ad breaks. "

" 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. "

" Barack Obama winning the election had an instant impact on everything - race relations, national self-esteem, tolerance. It also had an instant affect on 'Frost/Nixon.' At a stroke, instead of being a piece that reminded people of the agony they were in, it became an uplifting message about the agony they had escaped. "

" 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. "

" Most leading actresses have this energy, this 'Look at me. Here I am.' They're powerful; they're beautiful. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Most historians are engaged in fiction. "

" 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. "

" 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?' "

" 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. "