Quotes

Really, feminism is just about equality, and that's all. It's just saying equal rights.

Writing a film is like giving birth to a baby and then giving it up for adoption.

Writing comedy is a superpower.

I love the South Bank: every era of architecture is there, and you can stop, look, and listen.

Stage is the place of the playwright: you're guided by great actors and directors, but it's the playwright's word on the page that counts.

I think social media has reinvigorated people's enthusiasm to be active and to engage.

I think I'm always running away from somewhere, and to me, theatre's always felt like a good place to run away to.

I literally grew up in drama. I used to watch drama - the catharsis of the play - then see drama at home.

Most good work is a combination of parts you love and parts you could do better. My constant mantra is, 'Next time, next time, next time.'

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.

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.

My mother came to see me in a play when I was a student, and afterwards, I asked her what she thought. She said, 'Honest opinion? No.'

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.

I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.

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.

One of the things I think I can do in my lifetime is stop to remind myself that - and keep affirming that - women can sell movies.

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.

Feminism isn't just for women. It's for men.

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 can understand a family that's imploding. I have experience of that in my own life.

Good writing is often about trying to investigate something you feel is missing and trying to put it back.

I spent most of the Seventies living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and most of the Eighties living in Stoke-on-Trent.

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 know what it's like to be brought up by actors and writers.