My theory is that we used to have several personalities, and now we're encouraged to have one online.

While I was thinking about that, the military, I read a book called On Killing, about the obstacles people have to pulling the trigger in combat. So sometimes you just absorb all this stuff without realizing you were doing research.

Most writers or performers walk around with the notion in their head that - a paranoid worry that maybe people don't like them.

I'm actually quite pro-technology, but I'm a worrier, so I like to envision worst-case scenarios.

I pitched Jay Hunt the opening scene (prime minister, middle of the night, he's woken up...). She paused, and then she laughed. She was very intrigued and all that, and then she said, "Does it have to be a pig?" So we went through various options: Could it be a supermarket frozen chicken? A giant wheel of cheese? A pig seemed just the right level of absurd, but then when he walks in and there's actually a pig there, it's awful.

Whenever anything nice happens in the world I always expect something appalling to happen immediately afterwards.

Technology isn't the villain and the people aren't often really the villain so much as they're weak.