Usually the characters are where I start. Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'

There's something that's so basically corrupt about any system in which a good and fair profit is not enough. There has to be more, every year, every quarter, because your stock price has to rise.

If you believe in someone enough, and you just don't stop believing in them, mo matter what, no matter how much they push you away, and no matter how often they prove they're only there to use you.

All the studios are owned by multinational corporations, which are not usually bastions of the left. So all the actors, writers, and directors - or at least a great majority of them - live in fear because we're all insecure, we all want that next job, we all want to be loved, and we don't want to piss off some studio chief who won't hire us for the next movie.

We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28 - no Q, no gadgets.

As a general rule, I don't plan to travel with my Oscars, but we may have to make an exception.

I don't think writers should write about answers. I think writers should write about questions.