When you make a movie, a dramatization based on the real experience of a living subject, you cant airbrush that away into to a perfect movie arc.

I learned to stop being English about things like love. If you make a film in England about love, it's hugely complicated. It's all about saying what the weather is like, and you're secretly telling someone you love them. You know what the English are like; they're very repressed people. You don't get that in India. India is incredibly un-cynical about love. It's a not a complicated thing. It's me, you, love. Let's go.

Keep your central character moving, discovering, learning.

One doesn’t question a miracle.

There isnt a more important issue in the world than global warming. Even the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs crisis were a notional threat.

I guess my approach to adapting books is to treat them with a deep respect on one level and at another level part them to one side and go, 'I'm doing something completely different here.'

I'm very lucky. I actually like screenwriting. I rarely feel a sense of doom going to my desk.