"I don't blame anybody. I brought myself down. I gave them a sword, and they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I'd been in their place, I'd have done the same thing."

"Andy Milder - Frank Gannon"

"Toby Jones - Swifty Lazar"

"Rebecca Hall - Caroline Cushing"

"Oliver Platt - Robert Zelnick"

"Matthew Macfadyen - John Birt"

"You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, tranches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn't understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon's face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist."

"Kevin Bacon - Jack Brennan"

"Sam Rockwell - James Reston"

"Michael Sheen - David Frost"

"I let them down. I let down... my friends. I let down... the country. And worst of all... I let down our system of government, and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government, but now they think: "Oh, it's all too corrupt," and the rest. Yeah... I let the American people down. And I'm gonna have to carry that burden with me, for the rest of my life... My political life is over."

"Frank Langella - Richard Nixon"

"An epic battle for the truth."

"Whenever I have had my doubts, I remembered the construction worker in Philadelphia because he came up to me and he said "Sir I got only one criticism of that Cambodia thing; if you'd gone in earlier you might've captured the gun that killed my boy three months ago." So you're asking me do I regret going into Cambodia?... No, I don't. You know what, I wish I'd gone in sooner. And harder!"

"400 million people were waiting for the truth."

"Well, in boxing, you know, there's always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger's face. It's that moment that he feels the impact from the champ's first jab. It's kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along. You could see it in Frost's face. If he didn't know the caliber of the man that he was up against before the interview started, he certainly knew it halfway through the President's first answer."

"The man lost twenty-one thousand Americans and a million Indochinese during his administration. He only escaped jail because of Ford's pardon. Right now, I submit it's impossible to feel anything close to sympathy for Richard Nixon. He devalued the presidency and he left the country that elected him in trauma. The American people need a conviction, pure and simple. The integrity of our political system, of democracy as an idea, entirely depends on it. And, in years to come, if people look back and say that it was in this interview that Richard Nixon exonerated himself, that would be the worst crime of all."

"You have to set up that he has an anti-democratic personality. There's a reason they call him Tricky Dick."

"Edward Herrmann - Nelson Rockefeller"

"Buddy, before you join the jubilation at my being beaten again, you should remember: people vote not out of love, but fear. They don't teach that at Sunday School or the Whittier Community Playhouse!"

"[to a portrait of John F. Kennedy] When they look at you, they see who they want to be. They look at me and they see what they are."

"This is about me. Why can't you understand that, you of all people? It's not the war—it's Nixon! They want to destroy Nixon! And if I expose myself even the slightest bit they'll tear my insides out. Do you want that? Do you want to see that, Buddy? It's not pretty."

"Always remember: others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."

"I believe Governor Brown has a heart, even though he believes I do not. I believe he's a good American, even though he feels I am not. I'm proud of the fact that I defended my opponent's patriotism. You gentlemen didn't report it, but I'm proud that I did that. And I would appreciate it for once, gentlemen, if you would just print what I say. For sixteen years, ever since the Hiss case, you've had a lot of fun - a lot of fun. But recognize you have a responsibility, if you're against the candidate, to give him the shaft, but if you do that, at least put one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says now and then. I think, all-in-all, I've given as good as I've taken. But as I leave you I-I want you to know—just think what you're gonna be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around any more [echoes] - uh, uh, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. Thank you and good day."

"[saying farewell to his staff] There are many fine careers. This country needs good farmers, good businessmen, good plumbers, good carpenters. I remember my old man. I think that they would have called him sort of a, sort of a little man, common man. Well, he didn't consider himself that way. You know what he was? He was a streetcar motorman first. Then he was a farmer, and then he had a lemon ranch. It was the poorest lemon ranch in California, I can assure you. He sold it before they found oil on it. And then he was a grocer. But he was a great man because he did his job, and every job counts, up to the hilt, regardless of what happened. Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Well, I guess all of you would say this about your mother. But my mother was a saint. When I think of her two boys dying of tuberculosis, and seeing each of them die, and when they died. Yes, she will have no books written about her. But, she was a saint. Now, however, we look to the future. I remember something, uh, Theodore Roosevelt wrote when his first wife died in his twenties. He thought the light had gone from his life forever. But he went on and he not only became President, but as an ex-President he served his country, always in the arena, tempestuous, strong, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but he was a man."

"It took me a long time to fall in love with you, Dick. But it doesn't make you happy. You want them to love you. But they never will, Dick. No matter how many elections you win."

"Why do you think Kissinger is taping your calls? For history. His word against yours — and right now he's got the records."

"Can you imagine what this man would be like had anyone ever loved him?"

"[to John Dean] John, sooner or later, sooner, I think, you're gonna learn a lesson that's been learned by everyone who's ever gotten close to Richard Nixon. That he's the darkness reaching out for the darkness. And eventually, it's either you or him. Your grave's already been dug, John."

"He changed the world, but lost a nation."

"He had greatness within his grasp."

"Triumphant in Victory, Bitter in Defeat. He Changed the World, But Lost a Nation."

"Shattered by a dangerous web of conspiracy, betrayal and intrigue!"

"Anthony Hopkins - Richard Nixon"

"Joan Allen - Pat Nixon"

"James Woods - H. R. Haldeman"

"J. T. Walsh - John Ehrlichman"

"John Diehl - G. Gordon Liddy"

"Paul Sorvino - Henry Kissinger"

"Powers Boothe - Alexander Haig"

"Ed Harris - E. Howard Hunt"

"Bob Hoskins - J. Edgar Hoover"

"Brian Bedford - Clyde Tolson"

"Mary Steenburgen - Hannah Milhous Nixon"

"E. G. Marshall - John N. Mitchell"

"Madeline Kahn - Martha Beall Mitchell"

"David Paymer - Ron Ziegler"

"David Hyde Pierce - John Dean"