You're either a person with a conscience, or you're not. I think I've got quite a fine conscience.

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

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 important to me what the viewers think.

Every dramatist will tell you that they know deep down what happened in the course of making that film and to what degree they took steps that were convenient and to what degree they took steps in telling their story that were dishonest. You know in your heart of hearts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I don't want to become too self-conscious - it's why I never read reviews, even the good ones.

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.

Everything I write, I've written the first draft in Austria.

There is something fantastically post-modern about David Frost.

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.

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

When I started writing the screenplay for 'The Queen,' about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.

I actually speak fluent German. And I live in Vienna, and I'm married to a Viennese woman.

I'm not being presumptuous, I hope, when I say that 'The Crown' is little bit like 'The Godfather.' It is essentially about a family in power and survival.

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.