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.

I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.

You're working with other people and sometimes it doesn't work out the way you want, and sometimes you didn't realise what a mistake you've made until you see it projected.

As we go through life our relationship with our own mortality and our inevitable demise increases.

It's really a lovely feeling to write knowing that failure is taken off the table because if it's bad you just never show it to anyone.

A 20-year-old is never going to give death a second thought, whereas someone in their late 50s is going to think about it... I don't know, 20 times a day.

Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.