Beau Willimon

If you really think that ambition, power, lust, desire are not as applicable in the media as in politics or on Wall Street or anywhere else, you're deluding yourself.

The media doesn't create narratives, really. They're not that powerful. What they do is they tap into narratives that are already bubbling amongst their viewership or readership.

My jobs on campaigns were pretty low on the totem pole - I was an advance man.

The blessing that this film business has given me is that when I walk into a school I automatically have everyone's attention. They want to hear what the guy from 'Con Air' and 'Desperado' has to say.

Children know when they are being sold a sanitised version of the world, and I think that's a betrayal of the relationship between author and reader.

My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.