I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character.

The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.

It's a terrible thing that your life turns into a good story.

When you're writing for the screen you're really thinking all the time of what you have to do to make sure that they have the information that they need, that the emotional thread is not snapped, that the story moves at the right speed, to keep the audience hopefully sitting on the edge of their seats or else weeping or laughing.

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

You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the story changes. Then the question is, "How do you face up to violence?" And then you have to have a no-compromise position. And this is quite simply a lesson we learn in the school playground.

There's going to be no more compromise on issues where there should not be compromise. Enough with appeasement or apology and mollifying, all that. To hell with all that. I'm just going to fight my corner.