It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.

On movies, I like to involve the cast in the writing of the script. I like to have a rehearsal period, after which I do the last draft, which gives me a chance to incorporate anything the actors have come up with during the rehearsal period, so I'm very inclusive as a writer.

If you want to know who your friends are, have a major failure.

Either people walk round dressed as chickens or they listen to Beethoven.

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

When you're being stalked by an angry mob with raspberries, the first thing to do is to release a tiger.

God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.