I don't want to direct. I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can't see why I would ever want to direct.

If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable, rather than its literal narrative.

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.

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.

I never go back over something I've done and I never watch them again.

Having a phone call from Steven Spielberg was just a fantastic rite of passage. I loved it, and he was very focused, very likable, strictly business, and really sharp.