Peter Morgan Quotations

If you don't belong somewhere, that outsider status you have gives you perspective. Of course, another word for outsider is 'exile,' and that's not fun at all.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.

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.

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

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

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

I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it.

Once I start writing about somebody, I become very protective of them.

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

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

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

I don't understand and don't enjoy sci-fi, and it's just that if people aren't real, and they don't live in a real and recognizable society, I don't understand what to do.

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?

Since (Koizumi) defined party membership exclusively in terms of members' views on postal privatization, this does not necessarily imply that the party agrees on much else.

Certainly, I think to some extent Japan is happy to step back and let China take all the heat.

Capital spending plans are quite impressive. The forecasts are strong and show a continuation of the recovery going forward.

We suspect there might have been some public fund buying.

I would suspect the rise in January was a kind of bounce after four straight months of decline,

I think that the initial down pressure came from that it was one of the most popular stocks being traded by individuals.

Japan probably is the biggest victim of deflation in Asia,

Koizumi really hasn't talked much about anything else except postal reforms,

We know that the postal privatization bills will now pass fairly quickly. He has this huge majority which almost gives him dictatorial power but how he wants to use it is still pretty unclear.

we don't have a recession with these figures.

The overall trend is still that the recovery is weak. I wouldn't say that this is a turnaround yet.

At this point, there are well over 60,000 solutions saying they can help with SOX in some way. But few come prepackaged and few have everything that's needed.

The results are positive for capital investment, but the pace of expansion is moderate.

The big question was when this writing off of debt was going to end. We seem to have reached that level.

They have a high exposure to the home mortgage market, which is slowing and margins are falling.

This parallels other evidence that the economy remains stuck in a range, neither strengthening nor weakening notably.

It's not the busiest area in the whole of town, but we always have a lot of people in here so do a good trade.

It's getting to the point where the Bank of Japan will start moving up rates gradually. There is upward pressure on prices and wages, which is something the Bank of Japan will look at quite carefully.

The adoption of digital TV is accelerating around the world, ... As a result, the board can look forward with more confidence than was possible a year ago.

It's definitely positive news and suggests that the expansion is continuing, and if anything things might pick up a bit more in the second half of this year.

Not a chance. We knew they'd be desperate to win in front of their fans. We really didn't take much notice of it. We knew what we had to do coming in and we got a good result.

If you have a global organization, you could have 80 different business units, and every one of those has processes, risks, controls, and tests. It gets to be a bigger and bigger ball of string every period. But with ours you can close out, and only roll over changes.

By sharing the responsibility and making it everyone's business, it makes SOX compliance part of the business process. It just becomes part of how you do business, not this huge task to manage.

The truth is that it's all necessary. These solutions have to be implemented across the whole company, and having some ad hoc software in one department without having it in every one isn't going to solve your compliance issues.

The improving trend is positive for consumer spending, albeit modestly.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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,