Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I never know if I'm the builder or architect. The role shifts all the time. But what I have come to conclude is that the script is the muse.
Plays are painful. But the very act of writing is a basic freedom denied some women. Some would call it a privilege. So what's a little pain?
If the world is in complete flux for me and life is falling apart, if I just manage to get myself in front of a computer or at my desk, it calms.
Of course I am aware that there is a level of sexism in any large institution, but I find, in television and film, most of the producers are women.
The process of re-writing and writing and re-writing means that you may have a brilliant phrase, but over time it distills and distorts and changes.
I love the intimacy of TV. I love the fact that you don't necessarily have the pressure of an audience or anyone around watching it - just you and it.
I'm a writer of fiction. I try to write about my time, but it's dangerous if I'm seen as an investigative writer. I manipulate and change and control.
I hope my pieces have an authenticity to them, but my job is to filter the world and tell a story, not to define and recreate exactly what's going on.
I definitely people-watch. I often see photos of myself with my children: I'm always in the background with my mouth wide open, looking somewhere else.
Chaos is my natural habitat. I write about chaotic situations and about people finding their way through the chaos, the hope that you can find your way.
I always felt a bit of a nerd, but my family gets me and my oddities. My kids and partner are way cooler than I am, but they let me in the room with them.
What's great about the way 'Shame''s been received is that I kept on thinking there's no way this film will be received well since I've had such a good time.
I find it fascinating to see other people's photos on social media but I don't upload pictures myself. I don't even know how to. I'm completely digital-phobic.
I can go to the BBC and say, 'OK, my next drama is for women, and it is diverse women.' I take that to America, however, and I have another set of conversations.
All work is a process of failure. Every single thing I write, I look at it and go, 'Do better. That's not good enough. Do better.' And so, that keeps me up at night.
Journalism and the news has become not only a means to debate but also to judge and deconstruct celebrity, the news story, and the emotional lives of political people.
I understand this fear of the word 'feminism,' and I understand the fear of saying it because it becomes as divisive as 'sexism' has become. But I know a lot of male feminists.
If you're dealing with a powerful leader, you're inevitably going to have a dialogue with her political past. It was always my intention to interrogate Thatcher's political life.
I think theater is very much my natural home. But the truth is that the older I've got, and the more I've written film and television, I find it incredibly hard to write theater.
London does two things for me: it makes me feel connected, and it also makes me feel very isolated and quite lonely at times, and that's someone with two children in their family.
I think, in some ways, there's a point as a television writer that 'executive producer' is the natural credit you get, and it can be a vanity title, or you can make of it what you want.
The joy for me as a writer is that, despite the fact I spend most of my life on my own in a room eating too much chocolate and drinking too much tea, eventually they let me out into the world.
'Splendour' broke through to new territory for me. It exposed my commitment to writing for women: my desire to recognise that they can be as aggressive, violent, mercurial, and complex as men.
It's quite good when you fall flat on your bum on a creative level. Critics can hate what I do, or I've got something completely wrong, and it's good because that ego thing gets zapped for a while.
I got dumped off 'The Iron Lady' a month before they started shooting, and then they brought two new writers on. Then I was brought back on again. I'm just a bit of a rubber ball. I just bounce back.
I need to be in charge, and that comes from when I was growing up and money was always an issue. I didn't want to feel the fear of poverty again, and I suppose, in that way, I qualify as Thatcher Youth.
The notion of having your muse was not something that was built for women originally. That's not to say women don't have muses. I get muses in terms of actors or writers who inspire me, so I understand the concept.
I write an actual script rather quickly - a draft will take me two weeks - but I write a lot of drafts. My big thing is I don't re-read. When I write, I never re-read back. I'll send it, because if I re-read back, it will cripple me.
I didn't take into account the critical tsunami that comes with having work going out. I've gone from being a complete narcissist, someone who googles my own name, to someone who has to work separately from that to avoid creative paralysis.
I think casting is everything. You get a great cast and - certainly, as happens in 'The Hour' - so many of those performances on the page were transformed by those actors who took those parts and made it into something completely different.
When you see in this country and every other part of the world the huge pay disparity - in Hollywood, in every profession in the U.K., globally - and you see what is happening to women in every country socially and culturally, you can't not be a feminist.
Plays are the marathon of scriptwriting. You fix on a point somewhere in the middle distance, and you start running, and you don't stop until you get to the end. The theory is that you have something you cannot not say: this is the engine that propels you through to the last page.
Yes, I've heard of the 'Mad Men' comparisons, but I like to think 'The Hour' has its own distinctive voice. Although it is set in 1956, I have tried to give it a contemporary edge, and its themes of love, passion, romance, fury, professional jealousy, and personal failure are universal, I think.
I think film and television - particularly film - you are very isolated as a writer. If you're lucky, you have a good relationship with the director. Then you do make that development and come on set and be part of something. But ultimately, your work is kind of done by the time you come on set.
I try to stay focused on the work and recognize that I've been very lucky. Maybe it's 'cause I grew up with actors, but I've seen that recognition comes and goes, so all there really is is your family and friends. You have to maintain those constants in your life. Maintain what's beyond your work.
I get the 'Guardian' delivered every day and read it very quickly. I like it for both the TV and theatre reviews and because it's very accessible. At the weekend, I get the 'Observer' because I love the food supplement, Observer Food Monthly, and the style section. And I can't resist the News of the World.