Movie characters rarely get to think out loud or talk very much about their emotions. Instead they have to, very briefly, show their feelings through their action or through dialog.

Sometimes we see the Civil War in movies and imagine these neatly aligned rows of men with muskets, walking in line to shoot each other. In reality the things that fascinated me were how absolutely ruthless and violent so many engagements were, how much suffering and how men were not prepared.

No ninjas! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without any ninjas! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your safety.

Living men are bound by time... Thus, their lives have an urgency. This gives them ambition. Makes them choose those things that are most important, cling more tightly to that which they hold dear. Their lives have seasons, and rites of passage, and consequences. And ultimately, an end. But what of a life with no urgency? What then of ambition? What then of love?

I've always enjoyed reading history, particularly presidential biographies.

I always say that the characters in Jane Austen's original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what's going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others.

We may all deserve hell, but some of us deserve it sooner than others.