We all dream things into being; you imagine yourself having a child, and then you have a child. An inventor will think of something in his mind and then make it actual. So things are often passing from the imagined realm into the real world.

Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.

We are the storytelling animal.

I think anyone who knows me at all knows that I have been a movie addict all my life. I grew up in a city obsessed by cinema and where there are cinemas on every street corner.

Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there's just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.

If by some bizarre chance there turns out to be a god [...], I'm willing to bet he's an atheist too.

I did a lot of student acting when I was young.