There's no point in making a film out of a great book. The book's already great. What's the point?

I do enjoy working with writers.

Well, I suppose I'm interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.

You've got to play what people think you are, rather than what you are. You have to have a sense of what you are as you're playing what people think you are.

But everyone gets burnt, don't they? Certain things are outside of your control. I suppose the only thing you can learn as a director is to not put yourself into situations where it can get outside of your control. And that's what happened.

Is it fair to have given us the memory of what was and the desire of what could be when we must suffer what is?

I had made a decision, although I hardly knew it yet. It's often that way with decisions, they're made in some hidden part of us and the awareness secretes itself slowly into that conscious part of us that imagines it decides.