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.

Its as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

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?

It's always once the script's done in the first two years if it doesn't get going somehow or another, I've never had an old script that someone's made later on.

I think there's something strange about writing a script I've written many, many scripts - dozens and dozens of scripts - and every time I start one, I think to myself: 'why in the world do I think I know how to do this?'

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.

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.