If Im in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?

I know a lot of directors have a whole staff of people trying to find their next film for them. I always just end up writing mine.

I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.

I think Cool Hand Luke was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.

For me in a film, almost every scene you end up cutting a bit of the start of it out, and some of the end of it out because there's always...once you've rehearsed it and shot it, it feels like a couple of times and you can always get out sooner.

If you write an original, its like you went in and dug a well, and you hit oil. But an adaptation, its like the oil wells on fire, and they bring you in to put the fire out and get it working again - or something like that.

In exchange for ten years of being on top, I'm gonna end up in prison or I'm gonna end up dead, and there's something fascinating about that.