Abi Morgan

I am the most tense, annoying person in the world.

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.

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.

I still always think the greatest moment for me, as a writer, is when I press that button and send the first draft of the script.

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?

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.

I had a huge interior world as a kid: I'd sit on endless wet holidays in Cornwall playing with paper dolls.

Cornelia Parker has inspired a lot of my theatre work. Her art is about points of impact: it's poetic but with a strong literal story.

I work from about 8:30 A.M. until 7 P.M., five days a week, when I'm not sneaking off to buy another bar of chocolate.

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.

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.

When people say to me, 'You're so prolific!' it's, like, no, I'm just hopeless with money.

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.

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.

I'd love to know what the future looks like.

Writing comedy is a superpower.

I don't look back. I don't look forward. I am totally now.

The thing I love about London is that it is filled with migrants, including myself.

I used to believe in God as a child. God, for me, was linked with hope.

I am always running away from something.

As a writer, you're not even at the party when you work in film. At best, you're the one laying out the canapes.

If you want to fit in, you try to mirror whatever anyone wants from you.

I always deeply admire people who can stay still in a room and wait for people to come to them.

Eddie Marsan is just my favourite actor of all time. I love everything he's been in, so it's a dream come true to work with him.

You can't control how an audience responds to something. It's up to them.

Having worked on 'The Hour,' I now feel like I spend my whole time interrogating history.

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 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.

My parents' divorce was very difficult. Divorce is essentially incredibly painful, but it's also an essential part of life.

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.

To be honest, if I was going to have any kind of fantasy, be it left-wing or otherwise, it wouldn't involve Margaret Thatcher.

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'm a cheap date.

I like bowling with my kids at Shoreditch House.

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

I wrote a play for Miu Miu called 'The Moment Is the Present, That's Why It's Called a Gift.' Instead of doing a catwalk show, all the actors wore the clothes and performed a 20-minute play.

I'm quite interested in doing a film about fashion. As someone with no fashion taste whatsoever, I think it would be good for me.

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 there is a difference between connecting with a character and supporting and believing their policies.

My greatest love is my children, and they have inspired me to fight and stand up for the right things.

Having a daughter has reawakened my sense of feminism. I want to protect her.

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.

The world can make you very angry.

'Tender' is my most strongly autobiographical play.

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.

Now I would say I'm absolutely a feminist writer.

There are so many actresses I want to write for. I see them, and I think, 'Why is she not playing that lead? What's happened to that actress?' I think all I can do is to write parts for women, to say, 'Keep going, keep acting, because there are parts for you. There will be those plays.'

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.

I'm a woman, and I'm interested in writing stories from a female perspective.

I'm the world's worst at reading reviews and then pretending I've read the book.