I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own.

Hollywood screenwriters tend to have the longevity of NFL running backs. So the truth is no one can put more pressure on us than we put on ourselves.

The longer you work in this business [movie], the more you start to be able to see the carpentry. You can see where things are going, and it's harder to surprise you, as a reader

And I didn't grow up wanting to be a director. I grew up wanting to be a writer, so for me, that was always the goal - to be a novelist, not a screenwriter. And I think, again, if I didn't have the novels, maybe I'd be much more frustrated by not having directed yet.

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war.

I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of the other minor terrors. How could you fear anything more than death? Everything else offered moments of escape: a paralyzed man could still read Dickens; a man in the grips of dementia might have flashes of the must absurd beauty.

Every adaptation requires that the screenwriter make difficult choices - and in particular, difficult cuts.