I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.

In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.

Even if we die at 100, we're still dying young. I want at least 700 years. There's a lot of travelling and books to read and movies to see. I'm not going to squeeze it all in in 85 years.

I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

I don't think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth. My goal is always what Chuck Jones wanted his Warner Brothers cartoons to be, which was if you turn down the sound, you could still tell what's going on. I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.

The better a novel is, in literary terms, the more you can't be faithful. The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies.