When you finish some film and you let it out there, it is completely out of your control. You've done what you've done, you haven't done what you haven't done, and now you are up for judgment. People can be all kinds of ruthless and they can be all kinds of wonderful. The joy in what I do is in the doing of it. And then there is the part where people are either going to see what I've offered and liked it or they are going to see what I've offered and wish they hadn't.

The first time I saw 'Sunset Boulevard' I was probably eight or nine years old, and it really struck me how it's so simply put and elegant, yet there's so much going on.

I want to investigate what scares me and worries me.

I love how a story can help someone discuss something they otherwise would not.

Writing was my companion and stories were my companion when I was bedridden and didn't think I was going to walk again and all of that treacherous stuff. And stories are how you can comfort a child. It's certainly how I comforted my daughter, in good and bad times.

I really believe that if you're going to bring a child into the world, it's your job to parent that world. Especially if it's just you; you don't pawn her off on somebody.

I think that laughter is very close to terror and horror. Maybe that's just me, but that sort of all - over rush that happens when you are either laughing or terrified or weeping...? I think that comedians, in and of themselves, make other people laugh because they aren't necessarily the happiest people in the world. So they know a lot about dark things.