I doubt that there are many screenplays of movies that either of us have seen over the past 10 years that were first drafts, or were the work of purely one person. In my world, the actors and the director are all made of paper, and they do exactly what I say. I feel much more in control of the finished work. I feel like the statement that I'm making - even though it's in a medium by no means as glamorous or as widely recognized as film - is at least the statement that I wanted to make. That's a lot more important to me than the allure of working for Hollywood.

I'm not a particularly dark individual. I have my moments, it's true, but I do have a sense of humor.

In a sense, the story, or poem or verse or whatever it is you're writing, you can kind of think of it as a kind of projectile. Imagine it is a kind of projectile which has been specially shaped to be aerodynamic, and that your target is the soft grey putty of the reader's brain.

You can’t buy that kind of empowerment. To just know that as far as you are aware, you have not got a price; that there is not an amount of money large enough to make you compromise even a tiny bit of principle that, as it turned out, would make no practical difference anyway. I’d advise everyone to do it, otherwise you’re going to end up mastered by money and that’s not a thing you want ruling your life.

The Conservative Party is a religion in that they are bound together by belief. Almost any organization has its religious aspects.

War is a perversion of sex.

I didn't put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars.