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.

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.

I like L.A., but I think whats changed is that the kinds of films I do, the mid-range dramatic film, has become an endangered species.

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.

Masturbation is the thinking man's television.

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.

If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women.