I suppose I have the tastes of someone who teaches at a university in the provinces.

I always do like to write love stories, even if they end tragically.

The writer in movies is about as low as you can get and you really are a hired hand. You are paid a lot of money to be treated like dirt.

As a fairly innocent teenager, growing up in a village in Wales, I just thought, "God, I would like to go and hang about Soho and write great poetry and try to avoid drinking myself to death."

The most moving scene for me in 'Pride and Prejudice' is the Pemberley music room scene: Elizabeth has just saved Darcy's sister from embarrassment and confusion, and as the music plays on, Darcy's look of gratitude becomes a look of love, which we see reciprocated in Elizabeth's eyes.

I'm glad nobody has asked me to adapt 'Wuthering Heights' because I think I would make a mess of it. Everybody makes a mess of it. I think the Bronte Sisters are mad.

The BBC fulfils a wonderful cultural function. Maybe the problem is that it feels it needs to be everything to everybody.