The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea what's going to happen next. That goes quite soon, as people start talking about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it.

I would love to do something for TV... I wanna do 'Kavalier & Clay' on HBO as an eight-parter. It'll be so much better as a series, honestly.

I always say, 'I really need to take a break.' It's three days in and I'm getting pretty bored.

I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.

I've never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I've been to Los Angeles on my hands. I've never made a movie there and I've never been there for working reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.

I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.

The culturally specific, in particular, the American porch play that American writers have cherished and loved for many years in terms of their new writing, has seemed to have very little relevance to a much more fast-flowing, abstract, experimental drama that has been emerging in [the UK]. The porch play, not to mention that thing of, Oops, I wasn't loved enough by my father, somehow didn't have the relevance in this country.