Anthony McCarten

“I was born to a very large family, one of 7 kids. I grew up with carnivals and chaos all around me, so I can write anywhere.”

“Life is not a waste of time.”

“You can't write a character more brilliant than yourself. It's just not physically possible.”

“It turns out we are all quite easily swayed if someone knows what they are doing - which is a great thing and a dangerous thing.”

“We're living in extraordinary times, all the time. The issues that assail us are perennial. They haven't changed since the Greeks picked up a pen.”

“One of the great things about Churchill is that he had the guts to say the unpalatable, to level with the people, even if it cost him politically to tell them the truth.”

“No murder or sin or act of barbarism or cruelty has ever been committed by a person fully absorbed in the reading of a book. By this fact alone, we can conclude that readers are nicer people, at least until they put the book down. When we are reading, we are better.”

“When I was growing up in the '80s and working in the theater, David Mamet exploded with a whole new reworking of what dialogue should sound like. It was punchy and raw and repetitive, bursting with dynamic. I remember that switching on a lot of lights for me.”

“Be more ambitious. Do your homework. There's no easy way around this.”

“The people I'm drawn to are sort of self-created. They came from backgrounds where not much was expected of them, necessarily.”

“If we did not have the impulse and ability to believe in the impossible, we would not have religion, democracy, or marriage.”

“As you get older, you become more vain. But as your looks slowly deteriorate, your eyesight worsens, so it all balances out.”

“There's a really fine line between artistic license and artistic licentiousness. And history is a lousy filmmaker. It doesn't give you all the ingredients you need. No story will quite fulfill that three-act structure.”

“I still present myself as a New Zealander, answering people's questions about New Zealand and contributing in my own unlikely way to the global perception that Kiwis can and do fly high.”

“I am so superstitious that I think even discussing this subject is dangerous and will probably bring me terrible luck. Having been raised a Catholic, superstition becomes almost part of your DNA. The challenge is to slowly rid yourself of these little delusions.”

“I have three favorite cities: London, Wellington, and Los Angeles. What makes them so good? The friends who live there.”

“Reading is essential to human life. When the last reader dies, humanity will be at an end.”

“Most writers live in self-imposed exile, even when they don't leave their country. They prefer the undiscovered country inside their own heads.”

“Before Churchill had done anything else, he was a writer. He believed to the core that words matter. They count. They can change the world.”

“If you look at the copies of Churchill's speeches that have survived, they are heavily marked up. He was scrupulous about the impact of each word. He preferred short words and the repetition of short words. He knew everything about the techniques of rhetoric.”