Beau Willimon

“A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.”

“I was always a writer - working on campaigns was never a profession for me. It was something I did on the side, really, so the trajectory hasn't been a political operative who likes to dabble in writing and finds himself into stumbling on film and TV - that was always my goal.”

“I don't think that Washington is a fundamentally bad or corrupt place.”

“The way I see politics is, I don't think it's cynical to accept the fact politicians are human beings, that they're flawed, and they represent the best and the worst of us.”

“Real leaders have to live a paradoxical life, where they must break the rules in order to maintain them. If your expectations are high, you're setting yourself up for disillusionment. The land of governance is paved with gray streets, not black or white ones.”

“There were many years when I was hand-to-mouth and didn't know how I was gonna make rent. I've done every job under the sun, from busing tables, temping, and working in factories to SAT prep and detailing cars. So to be able to make a living where all I do is write is absolutely liberating.”

“In politics, it's very theatrical. There's a lot of stage craft. The campaign is trying to tell a story that they want people to believe in, and candidates are playing the role, like actors, by a creative personae that people will be attracted to.”

“The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.”

“Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you're dealing with a lot more characters, a lot more locations, and you're able to rely on things that you just can never do on the stage.”

“When you have both parties who will not find ways to compromise, who won't meet in the middle, you have paralysis. It's the perversion of idealism.”

“I refuse to buy a PS3 or Xbox for my home for fear that it might ruin my life. I think I would cease to accomplish anything productive, would quickly dispense with all human contact, and would very well end up with a nasty case of arthritis in my over-used digits from constant gameplay.”

“The press don't wake up in the morning simply to be a mouthpiece for pols - they're out to uncover and expose news. That often is at odds with what politicians are setting out to do - it's both symbiotic and antagonistic. They need each other, they work in concert with one another, they work against one another.”

“If you really think that ambition, power, lust, desire are not as applicable in the media as in politics or on Wall Street or anywhere else, you're deluding yourself.”

“Like any young person who gets into a political campaign, I joined out of a highfalutin' desire to change the world. But you start to see the sort of tactics people use. You start to see politics not only in the macro but in the micro of the campaign itself. Some people get turned off by this side of it. Other people are drawn to it.”

“I certainly keep my eye on Washington all the time because often life is stranger than fiction.”

“In the best possible scenario, whenever you get notes from people, they're good notes, and they see things that you wouldn't have seen otherwise, and they make you a better writer.”

“Richard III is not likeable. Macbeth is not likeable. Hamlet is not likeable. And yet you can't take your eyes off them. I'm far more interested in that than I am in any sort of likeability.”

“At home I mostly stick to online Scrabble, or chess or Risk - games I find far less addictive than the spectacular games created for consoles these days. But, whenever I get the chance, I head over to my friend Kyri's house to play his PS3.”

“Is self-interest a bad thing? We want our leaders to be pure and good, but at the same time we want them to be effective, and to be effective you often have to be ruthless and not bound by ideology or the same morals that we pretend to hold ourselves to.”

“When you're lucky enough to get paid a nice chunk of change to write a movie or a TV show, you have no right to complain, really. I guess it's more of an appeal to the powers that be that the less they interfere, the more likely, actually, they are to get something that works, I think.”