While data can only tell you what has happened in the past, it can in some ways give you a sense of what might be of interest to an audience in the future.

The characters created cannot just be a mouthpiece for the writer. When you look at a piece of writing, and it's genuine and it doesn't feel like every character is just a mouthpiece for the writer, but that they've been created in such a way that they're expressing an idea that a writer wants to get across, that's when a story succeeds.

It's much more interesting when you go to different places - make a left turn when nobody expects you to make a left turn, and make a right when nobody expects you to do that.

But I feel that I have a responsibility to help the film and I have relations with the studio and with those who put up the money so that I can tell a story that I believe in.

I find drinking really helps.

Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.

What I do is interpret, not create. I may add elements and do something different. That is what is so incredible about theatre. Why do we love it that there are nine Hamletsor six King Lears over two years? We love to watch a different actor attack the same material.