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.

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 hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions. That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter.

It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.

I can't do a film if I don't start with the writing.

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?