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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The thing that I'm most in love with is the thing that I'm writing at the moment.