I'm mainly interested in people trying to figure s#!t out.

There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to the reader. As a director, you are limited by everything: weather, budget, and egos.

The first thing that put me on the map was my Sherlock Holmes novel.

I think that the reason that people are so up in arms about movies that have historical inaccuracies is because now that we've trashed our education institutions beyond repair, people fear that the only people are getting their histories is through the movies, so the elephant in the room is that no one wants to talk about why we're so passionately obsessed with accuracy.

First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they've done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it's the "definitive" something, I'm always recoiling.