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.

I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can.

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.

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

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?

Because I've been at it so long and very steadily, I have a lot of credits, but I probably have twice as many scripts that were never made for whatever reason.

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.