I was terrible at maths, but I could grasp science, and I used to love to read about the lives of the scientists. I wanted to be a scientist or an inventor.

I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say, "I learned so much today," that shows something about the cinema. Because the cinema is very young. It's only 100 years old.

So much of the art of film is to do less. To aspire to do less.

They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I'd be sure to have some dough to support my family.

Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie... There is something we know that's connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.

Being a former theater student, of course, there is a part of me that is fascinated with stage crafts and what you can do with illusions and working within the confines of the studio.

So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you're comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what's a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite.