If I'm at home on my own and the writing isn't going well, I clean my house. And there have been times in the past few years when my house has looked really clean.

In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of.

There are some people who walk into a room and they oxygenate it, by their very being there's fresh air. Then there are those who come in with the smell of death and they suck the life out.

Life is much weirder than fiction; nothing's more absurd.

I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.

When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy.

It takes a very strong brain to resist the absolutes, the myths that the media and the politicians peddle - the idea that if you are too kind, where does it all end? That not to help someone is somehow a good idea.