There are one hundred glow-stars on my bedroom ceiling. (...) Glow-stars are strange. They make the ceiling disappear.

By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.

I never feel a huge need for backstory in my novels or films. Quick sketches are often enough. When you encounter people in life - like a chance encounter at a bar or wherever you happen to be - you make these incredibly quick, quite intricate decisions about people based on very small amounts of coded information. We're good at that. Long descriptions prior to meeting someone or as you're getting to know them almost don't work.

I can kid people, including myself, into believing that something on the page will work. But when you film it, you just think, "Oh ...".

It slightly depends on your perspective, sort of how you look at these things, but when I sit down to write a script, I'm not planning to write a script; I'm planning to make a film, and so I only see the script as being just a step there.

I knew my affection for the Philippines was equally as telling: a democracy on paper, apparently well ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos. A place where I'd felt instantly at home.

Waking was the most reliable part of a dream, as built into dreams as death is to life. You dream, you wake: you live, you die.