We're all ordinary in a way. We can all be hurt. We can all be unbalanced. We all have feelings. Life can treat us harshly, even shockingly sometimes.

Im living as an artist, and thats a staggering feeling, its a total luxury. And because you have this amazing chance, with so much freedom, Im determined to make something that is worth that. I feel this responsibility - to create something that makes an audience feel, which takes them somewhere. But thats very hard to achieve.

When people are out of their comfort zone, it’s more dramatic, more prone to have more entertaining experiences, get into fights. That’s the dramatic instinct, to move people out of what they know and make them deal with it.

I have a theory about Ireland, being at the edge of Europe. For 1,000 years, people didnt know what was beyond. But we thought about it - a lot. And that beyond became internalized in our psyche.

I would love to make a 1830's period piece, a house in the country, a classic atmospheric haunted house movie, visually it would be so beautiful, the costumes, the candles, the darkness, and the quiet, no radio, to TV, the clock ticking away.

The young person isn't certain that love can be real; the middle-aged man is only discovering that it is; and the older person seems so sure of it. I was interested in the way that many of us go through the whole of our lives staying with someone just out of complacency, because leaving isn't easy.

I guess Im attracted and repelled by isolation. It scares me. And its why I tend to write about older characters, too, because for them the stakes are somewhat higher.