There are so many other people involved in the making of a play or a television series or whatever... even if you're a novelist there's so much in just the marketing of a book, or even the time... the zeitgeist, the moment at which it comes out. There's a lot you can't control.

I give everything my best shot and sometimes it doesn't work out and other times it works out much better than you thought.

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

You don't really work together with Clint Eastwood. I mean, he takes the script and he shoots it - and he shoots it very faithfully.

The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.

Sometimes you are lucky enough to get offered things and there is no rhyme or reason.

People test movies within an inch of their life, so that the entire audience experience is a uniform one.