I enjoyed Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom.' Would I make that into a film? I think it's better suited to television. That would very much be a dialogue and performance piece, and it would take some very skilful direction - but not my kind of directing. But I thought it was a real literary work.

Music stops you from thinking.

I love stories and I don't like to repeat myself. And I look for new stuff, and as they say it gets harder.

It's spiritual, a man that has a past and regrets, but you can as a director take a shot, and there's something in the eyes and the face, you just can't fake it, you can't teach it, and I think Ed Harris has that quality.

I had always been wary of doing any autobiographical movies, truly feeling at home with fiction.

Movies tie things up in an arbitrary length of time, but I have always liked things that aren't fully realised.

You can mix in certain sensitivities as a filmmaker.