Peter Morgan Quotes

There are so many other people involved in the making of a play or a television series or whatever... even if you're a novelist there's so much in just the marketing of a book, or even the time... the zeitgeist, the moment at which it comes out. There's a lot you can't control.

There's no way of telling why you want to do things beforehand. Something just grabs you. It might not grab you six months later, and it might not have grabbed you six months before, but at that particular moment it grabs you, so you jump on it.

Firms are a bit concerned about things like oil prices and US growth but actually the change (in firms expectations) is quite small so I think broadly theyre looking for more of the same.

As we go through life our relationship with our own mortality and our inevitable demise increases.

I give everything my best shot and sometimes it doesn't work out and other times it works out much better than you thought.

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

You can only do the best you can in the minute that you're doing it.

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

It's really a lovely feeling to write knowing that failure is taken off the table because if it's bad you just never show it to anyone.

The thing that I'm most in love with is the thing that I'm writing at the moment.

You're working with other people and sometimes it doesn't work out the way you want, and sometimes you didn't realise what a mistake you've made until you see it projected.

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

I just try and do something good. But as a writer, you're slightly out of control.

I don't want to direct. I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can't see why I would ever want to direct.

The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.

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.

When you make a choice as a writer about what it is you want to write, and what it is you're going to spend six months thinking about, you have to fall in love.

I never go back over something I've done and I never watch them again.

I had no intention of providing any answers or solutions, because you'd only look a fool, but I did want to talk about what it's like to be in a state where you're wondering. And perhaps I was also receptive to the fact I was entering middle age and those thoughts come - to pretend that they don't come is just crazy.

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

A 20-year-old is never going to give death a second thought, whereas someone in their late 50s is going to think about it... I don't know, 20 times a day.

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

You don't really work together with Clint Eastwood. I mean, he takes the script and he shoots it - and he shoots it very faithfully.

Sometimes you are lucky enough to get offered things and there is no rhyme or reason.

If you're growing up in times of peace and live in a country where there's plenty of food and good healthcare, you grow up without any relationship with death.

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

It might be more difficult because you haven't got a book or a prop, but for the most part I like to write unpaid... initially and my own stories.

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

The stuff that I have perhaps become known for that's based on fact, and English statesmen shouting at each other all the time, doesn't entirely represent who I am. I am not a politics wonk.

I'm always pre-occupied with what it is that I'm doing at the moment.

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

Having a phone call from Steven Spielberg was just a fantastic rite of passage. I loved it, and he was very focused, very likable, strictly business, and really sharp.

We give each other a wide berth even if we have the flu, let alone... So, I think that's part of the stigma that people who have diseases suffer. It's almost infectious... if somebody is closer to death, they're almost a bad omen and I think that's terrible.

The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.