One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.

I'm a big sports fan. Football. Cricket.

If you love a book you tend not to follow its surface value, you follow the other things in it.

I like to hide behind my intellect. But the truth is, unless all of us start getting honest about what the reality is, things aren't going to change. If we all keep pretending that we know stuff and if everyone else would do what we knew and everything would be a better place, then nothing is going to change.

The most extraordinary thing, you'd be given permission for, and then the weirdest, simplest things, you just wouldn't be able to obtain permissions. And it would go on and on and on forever and ever, and there was no way to know. You have to kind of approach it with an open, quite optimistic mind, no matter what's thrown at you, because it will only ever result in damaging the film if you let any kind of despondency get to you.

If you take a loud pride in anything, people will rightly shoot you down.

I have this theory that your first film is always your best film in some way. I always try to get back to that moment when you're not relying on things you've done before.