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.
— Abi Morgan
I talk to myself all the time - it's something my children have observed in the car.
Of all the mediums, theatre is the one where you really need to have something to say - because it's just you, the words, and the space.
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.
I used to listen to 'Woman's Hour' every morning, but I've discovered that I can't have words on when I'm working.
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.
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 was a pretty heartbroken 13-year-old. That was the year my grandmother died and my parents split up.
I was never cool as a kid.
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.
Good writing is often about trying to investigate something you feel is missing and trying to put it back.
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.
Really, feminism is just about equality, and that's all. It's just saying equal rights.
I think I'm always running away from somewhere, and to me, theatre's always felt like a good place to run away to.
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.'
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.
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.
'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.
Life experiences inherently change you as a writer. My sense of fury calmed down when I had children and found a loving partner.
'The Iron Lady' is not a biopic. Phyllida Lloyd and Meryl Streep coined it 'King Lear for girls.'
I'm the world's worst at reading reviews and then pretending I've read the book.
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.
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 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.
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.
Writing a film is like giving birth to a baby and then giving it up for adoption.
I can understand a family that's imploding. I have experience of that in my own life.
Feminism isn't just for women. It's for men.
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 think social media has reinvigorated people's enthusiasm to be active and to engage.
Even if you've been a coward all your life, death is a heroic act.
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.'
I literally grew up in drama. I used to watch drama - the catharsis of the play - then see drama at home.
The older I get, the more I have to think long and hard about what I need to say and why.
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.
Usually when I write a movie, I'm lucky if I get one good actress.
I don't really read that many magazines; I'm more of a browser. I get 'Vanity Fair' quite often if I'm on a train.
I'm so straight and boring, really. I have two kids and a very nice partner.
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.
I think that, as a writer, while it's your job to construct stories, you have to navigate your way through them with your heart.
I know what it's like to be brought up by actors and writers.
I spent most of the Seventies living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and most of the Eighties living in Stoke-on-Trent.
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 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.
I always say writing a play is like toothache: I find it incredibly painful, and it's only once the play's out that the pain is gone.
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 never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.
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.
