I'm less comfortable making American movies because I don't know them so well.

I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.

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?

For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.

I'm less comfortable making American movies because I don't know them so well.

Ireland is becoming like everywhere else, but that's the one I grew up in: the one that's hugely illogical. Rather wonderful, in a way. I never found this oppression of religion and that, but I did enjoy growing up in a culture that didn't need to be rational all of the time.

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