Watching Jamila sometimes made me think the world was divided into three sorts of people: those who knew what they wanted to do; those (the unhappiest) who never knew what their purpose in life was; and those who found out later on. I was in the last category, I reckoned, which didn't stop me wishing I'd been born into the first.

At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?

Harvey [Weinstein] didn't want to release [MY SON THE FANATIC]; he held it for two years because he wanted a happy ending, although I don't know what that means. Does that mean the taxi driver leaves his wife or doesn't leave his wife? I think it has a happy ending.

Fundamentalism is dictatorship of the mind

I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they could no longer see me as a failure.

The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.

Almost certainly I will not tell her my intentions this evening or tonight. I will put it off. Why? Because words are actions and they make things happen. Once they are out you cannot put them back.