Hollywood always chooses young and beautiful men and throws them into enormous, highly expensive toy-like movies, and I think sometimes it's hard for the maturity of the craft to emerge in that kind of glare.

If you're brought up Catholic, you're convinced of magic at a very early age. You're convinced the world isn't entirely real, which is a kind of conviction that never leaves you, for some strange reason.

I don't think we have enough imaginary creatures in cinema. It seems like we're stuck with zombies, vampires, and werewolves. We should have everything. We should have minotaurs. We should have elves. We should have mermen in popular culture. But instead we've stuck with vampires.

I've had three novels published, and I was working a little bit in theater in Ireland. I wrote one film script just to see what it would turn out like.

When you've written a movie, you then get together with a whole lot of people and make it. In many ways, I think it is far nicer to be with people rather than being completely solitary.

Hollywood always chooses young and beautiful men and throws them into enormous, highly expensive toy-like movies, and I think sometimes it's hard for the maturity of the craft to emerge in that kind of glare.

If movies have to satisfy every possible quadrant before they're even made, they're dull. You only get great things when people overreach themselves.