Quotes from Anthony McCarten

I can't approve of a private company that profits from algorithmic amplification, dissemination and micro targeting of corrupt information, much of it produced by coordinated schemes of disinformation that splinter our shared reality, poison social discourse and paralyse democratic politics... Pg179

for as long as self-doubt is not paralysing, it also allows for alternative points of view to be given their proper weight and consideration and so can be considered a vital step in any sound decision-making process.

Life, especially in relation to other women, would always be a competition, one she would rarely win.

Loss, this was what he felt. Loss and deprivation. One man owns, another man craves - the craving far more passionate than the dull pleasures of ownership. How galling not to have when you were the type who deserved to have - yes, deserved.

personal privacy. That debate, a quaint twentieth-century one, is just ignorant background noise: the right to privacy is gone, lost already, or at least so compromised it's really worthless. No, the real present and future threat is manipulation, the inculcation of prescribed attitudes and modes of behavior into an unwitting citizenry, the unseen shift by the state from monitoring to control, the last chapter of the long tale of democracy, free will deformed into willing compliance.

What chance could an algorithm have against all that inner chaos? And yet that remains the crucial challenge of the future, to bridge the gap between the calculable and the numinous, between the machine and the erratic, unstable, passion-ruled soul of man,

But where can you go and truly not be found? Where can anyone go anymore?

There is the cult of the actor and of the director, and there's even been the cult of the celebrity chef and gardener, but there has never been a cult of the screenwriter. But I'm happy about that because what I crave - in a completely venal way - is creative opportunities, not recognition.

When I grew up, my house contained only two books: the Bible and the 'Edmonds' cookbook. We were a working-class household. Books were a poor second to the television, which was always on, usually with me in front of it.

We're living in extraordinary times, all the time. The issues that assail us are perennial. They haven't changed since the Greeks picked up a pen.

Since my student days, I'd been a fan of those books with titles like 'Great Speeches that Changed the World,' as I loved the idea that the right person with the right words at the right time could really make a difference.

Reading is essential to human life. When the last reader dies, humanity will be at an end.

I often find that writers who disavow the importance of an ending are just not very good at endings.

If we did not have the impulse and ability to believe in the impossible, we would not have religion, democracy, or marriage.

It's impossible to make a living in the arts unless you make a fortune. There's almost no in-between. Writers are either broke or rolling in it. Oddly, you can't tell them apart.

No murder or sin or act of barbarism or cruelty has ever been committed by a person fully absorbed in the reading of a book. By this fact alone, we can conclude that readers are nicer people, at least until they put the book down. When we are reading, we are better.

The New Zealand sense of humor is tough and realistic. Jokes are not surreal; they are about life and death and tough decisions.

I still present myself as a New Zealander, answering people's questions about New Zealand and contributing in my own unlikely way to the global perception that Kiwis can and do fly high.

It turns out we are all quite easily swayed if someone knows what they are doing - which is a great thing and a dangerous thing.

If it's correct to say that there is a closing of minds around the world, story is one of the most powerful agents of reviving the conversation between ideas. Ultimately, that's all stories are trying to do - open the conversation. They cannot give a proscription. It's not clairvoyant art.

My experience is, the writer I was when I began was only a fraction of what I feel capable of doing now. Don't stand on that threshold saying, 'I'm uncertain about my talent.' You can grow that part of yourself.

At some point early on, I realized that three of the greatest speeches ever delivered were by Winston Churchill, and they were written and delivered within a four-week period of each other.

Most writers live in self-imposed exile, even when they don't leave their country. They prefer the undiscovered country inside their own heads.

My routine is to create activities for myself unrelated to writing that allow little time for writing. This means that when I do get the chance to write, it is like a stolen luxury, something clandestine and almost forbidden.