I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.

My plays are always pushing towards cinema anyway. They're down and dirty, real and more fun.

It's the way that I think about the world, and the way that I like to tell stories - I don't think you should get too heavy. There's enough out there, in the world, with violence. I think that comedy lightens the heaviness [of the world].

I won't work on anyone's else's script. I won't write for anyone else. I write my own stuff and make that when the time is right.

I don't feel I have to defend myself for being English or for being Irish, because, in a way, I don't feel either. And, in another way, of course, I'm both.

I think as a writer you never have to flee from fame because you're not that visible in the first place, but, after the Broadway success of 'Beauty Queen,' people were coming up to me all the time, and I wasn't really prepared for that level of attention.

Theatre was an art form that I didn't really respect, and because I wanted to shake it up and do different things on stage, I was able to combine all the things I'd learnt through writing on my own.