In the old days, you cut out a scene that might've been a really great scene, and no one was ever going to see it ever again. Now, with DVD, you can obviously... there's a lot of possibilities for scenes that are good scenes.

I am not anti-media at all. But the media, the news anywhere in the world, is based on drama.

It is now such a complex society in terms of media. It just comes at us from every direction. You kind of have to push it all away.

Second movies are great because you can drop into them, and it doesn't really have a beginning on it, particularly in a traditional way. You can just tear into it.

Filmmakers have to commit to making 3-D films properly like Jim Cameron did and not do cheap conversions at the tail end of the process.

You don't want to believe everything you read on the Internet.

Learning how to edit movies was a real breakthrough.

Obviously, movies, you're often on location, out in the rain or the sun, in a real place where the trees and the cars are real. But when you're on stage, as an actor you're imagining the environment that you're in.

If you take a regular animated film, that's being done by animators on computers, so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process.

To direct a genuinely animated film, you're really having meetings and discussing what you want with animators who then go off and produce one shot at a time that you look at and comment on.

I never overtly analyse my own movies, I don't think that's my job to do that. I just muddle through and do what I think is best for the movie.

If you make a trilogy, the whole point is to get to that third chapter, and the third chapter is what justifies what's come before.

I love Bilbo Baggins. I relate really well to Bilbo!

I never wanted to do 'The Hobbit' in the first place.

We had to get past the mechanical film age to be able to explore other things, but it will be interesting.

Too often, you see film makers from other countries who have made interesting, original films, and then they come here and get homogenized into being hack Hollywood directors. I don't want to fall into that.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

I always have had a slightly jaundiced view about people who promote books about themselves.

No family is complete without an embarrassing uncle.

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.

People bang on all the time about whether what I've done is the truth or not. Well, to me, history is just a series of elaborate fictions.

I watch drama on DVD because I can't stand ad breaks.

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

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.

I don't think I'm an unhappy person. It's just an intensity, not a depressive thing. It's just not having enough layers of skin. It's exhausting.

The film 'The Queen' came about with a producer saying to me that he wanted me to write about the circumstances behind Diana's death. I think he was hoping that I would come up with some journalistic scoop that would identify an MI5 covert plot.

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

By nature of the job, most actors are striking, remarkable, and alpha.

As any showrunner will tell you, it is crushing work. It is around the clock. It is like a monastic commitment that you make.

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

I have always cited the decision by director Stephen Frears to shoot 'Mrs. Henderson Presents' before my script of 'The Queen' as the reason for my taking the plunge as a playwright.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 something fantastically post-modern about David Frost.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.