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

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

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 was a moment in the early '80s when I wanted to work on films and wanted to live in L.A.

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

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

A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.