I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with.

If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

Masturbation is the thinking man's television.

You see, I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.

I think there's something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.