It's a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.

I like action movies, even though I think action movies are kind of derided now. But there is something extraordinary about action movies, which is absolutely linked to the invention of cinema and what cinema is and why we love it.

There is a Steve [Jobs] that Apple would like to actually present to the public. They have a character, Steve, and they want to keep that story going. And it's very important that writers challenge that occasionally and not just trust their parent companies to tell them.

The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.

Both of my sisters have been teachers and they used to say you get asked between 300 and 600 questions every day which you have to answer. That's exactly what directing is. And the vast majority of those questions are not very interesting really, but they need somebody to make a decision - a good one or a bad one - and they follow it.

What you do is take the power [popularity] gives you - which is very temporary and minor but significant - and use it. The danger is that you use it on a vanity project that no one wants to watch.

If I was American, I think I'd live in New York, because I like that East Coast mentality. There's nothing wrong with Hollywood. If you want to be a big time filmmaker, you should go to Hollywood.