Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Truth is an illusory notion.
Most historians are engaged in fiction.
It's important to me what the viewers think.
No family is complete without an embarrassing uncle.
I watch drama on DVD because I can't stand ad breaks.
If you start to analyze what you do, it can paralyze you.
Everything I write, I've written the first draft in Austria.
Sometimes if biography is too head-on, it can feel too obvious.
I can't imagine anyone thinking, 'Oh good, it's awards season!'
There is something fantastically post-modern about David Frost.
You can only do the best you can in the minute that you're doing it.
I'm always pre-occupied with what it is that I'm doing at the moment.
I never go back over something I've done and I never watch them again.
Once I start writing about somebody, I become very protective of them.
By nature of the job, most actors are striking, remarkable, and alpha.
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.'
Robert Bolt's storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to.
In my peaceful moments, I yearn to write a bank heist like the one in 'Heat.'
The thing that I'm most in love with is the thing that I'm writing at the moment.
I just try and do something good. But as a writer, you're slightly out of control.
There is no inherent contradiction between being right-wing and being intelligent.
Sometimes you are lucky enough to get offered things and there is no rhyme or reason.
The films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on forgiveness.
You can't ask someone to act middle-aged. Someone has to bring their own fatigue to it.
I have a great deal of compassion for those in public life and what we have done to them.
I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it.
I actually speak fluent German. And I live in Vienna, and I'm married to a Viennese woman.
I don't want to become too self-conscious - it's why I never read reviews, even the good ones.
As we go through life our relationship with our own mortality and our inevitable demise increases.
You're either a person with a conscience, or you're not. I think I've got quite a fine conscience.
I am drawn to characters so full of internal contradictions. Idi Amin was one. I loved writing him.
I don't think of the crown as this glamorous thing. It's this murderous, bejeweled thing, the crown.
Belief in God is so deranged that it makes absolutely no sense, but it holds people together somehow.
The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.
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.
People test movies within an inch of their life, so that the entire audience experience is a uniform one.
I'm not a vindictive person. But I do want to shine a light on human frailty and heroism in equal measure.
Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.
To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?
It was so interesting to discover Nixon was a Californian. I always think Nixon should come from a cold place.
I'm constantly having to check my conscience about what I'm writing and the responsibility of what I'm saying.
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.
You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.
If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative.
I give everything my best shot and sometimes it doesn't work out and other times it works out much better than you thought.
If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable, rather than its literal narrative.
I read nonfiction. There's very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.
As any showrunner will tell you, it is crushing work. It is around the clock. It is like a monastic commitment that you make.