It's great to get out of the study and work with real living and breathing people.

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

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

I love films. If I'd known how to get into or do it from the word go, I would have done that.

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.

I'm ashamed to say the first play I saw at the Royal Court was mine.