We were extremely prescient in that we predicted the Soviet coup before it happened. That was kind of amazing.

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.

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.

If you look at the heroes of antiquity and myth, they all have flaws. It's something that they have to overcome; their flaws are something that they have to act in spite of. The challenge is not to defy your fate, but to endure it. That is heroic.

Movie studios, Hollywood studios, by and large are not making the kind of movies that I go to see.

When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel."