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

For example, the character of Claire in In Dreams wasn't imagined enough by me. Annette Bening is a great actress, and she gave a great performance, but because I hadn't fully written it essentially the character wasn't finished.

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.

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 do enjoy working with writers.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

And I think I often choose to do something because it's quite different from what I've done before.