The collaborator has to be someone who understands that his role is to help you articulate what you want, but at the same time is not just going to be mechanically obeying, but adding to, supplementing, and coming up with stuff.

Death is a part of life, and eventually I assimilated that completely.

I think that one of the things that is happening in the so-called "clash of civilizations" is that the confidence that was once obvious in the Western Judeo-Christian tradition has been weakened tremendously. There's a feeling that there's a cynical, corporate layer that's really driving it - one that's ready to compromise - and that the real confident energy around the world is coming from Islam, that the believers take their own faith at face value and with great confidence and in far greater numbers.

The collaborator has to be someone who understands that his role is to help you articulate what you want, but at the same time is not just going to be mechanically obeying, but adding to, supplementing, and coming up with stuff.

When people are temperate in their behavior, in their lives, someone who is addictive or extreme or obsessive can't understand how people can just go through their lives in the middle, and people who are rational and balanced can't understand the opposite. I'm one who's in the extreme camp in almost every area of my life and I always have been. I've observed that I'm in a minority, but I never understand people who are measured.

In a way, I think that the movie Fight Club [1999] did a weird, negative thing to boxing, culturally. I mean, it is sort of similar to what has happened to the novel. For however many good novels are written, the novel itself has completely lost its place.

I work seriously with complete integrity. I never, never, never have offered a part to anyone who didn't deserve it, and I've never not delivered when I do offer a part. My word is better than a contract.