Peter Morgan

“In a way, I think of the press as my colleagues. I don't want to throw hand grenades at people who do something that's pretty similar to what I do. But at the same time, we all need to take ourselves seriously and be responsible as professionals. And there was a collective failure in the treatment of Christopher Jefferies.”

“Some of the things I have written about are a way of connecting with my father - I know he knew who Idi Amin was, and I know he knew who Longford was. And I know he knew who Nixon was, because shortly before he died, I talked to him about Watergate.”

“You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.”

“In some shape or form, we do have an emotional connection to our head of state, even if, for the most part, they seem very remote.”

“I can't imagine anyone thinking, 'Oh good, it's awards season!'”

“The first and primary requirement for me in a director that I'd want to work with is: do they love writing, and do they love the collaboration process with writers?”

“There are people who are bound journalistically to a code of ethics that means they can't quote something that isn't sourced, whereas what I do is entirely unsourced. I effectively fictionalise history and yet somehow aim at a greater truth.”

“I'm constantly having to check my conscience about what I'm writing and the responsibility of what I'm saying.”

“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 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.”

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

“Most leading actresses have this energy, this 'Look at me. Here I am.' They're powerful; they're beautiful.”

“I make a point of not reading reviews because of the old adage, if you read the good ones then you have to read the bad ones, and if you read the bad ones, you have to, you know... And also because it's a very, very bewildering and exposing thing.”

“There were a couple of things I lost sleep over with the play 'Frost/Nixon,' so I went back and addressed them a bit more in the film.”

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

“I don't think of the crown as this glamorous thing. It's this murderous, bejeweled thing, the crown.”

“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.”

“Authorised royal biographers are so straitjacketed, deferential, fawning, and unadventurous that they can only be after a knighthood. Or they're completely scurrilous and insolent, like Andrew Morton or Paul Burrell.”

“I wrote a draft of 'Playboy' for Warner Brothers, and it was impossible to really be independent of Hugh Hefner. In the end, Hugh Hefner was unable to take the back seat required to be able to write something about him that I felt I could do.”

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