You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas.

It was how wars really ended, Dieffenbaker supposed -- not at truce tables but in cancer wards and office cafeterias and traffic jams. Wars died one tiny piece at a time, each piece something that fell like a memory, each lost like an echo that fades in winding hills. In the end even war ran up the white flag. Or so he hoped. He hoped that in the end even war surrendered.

There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.

Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

I identify with the characters very closely. At the same time that I`m outside, writing, I`m also inside, experiencing, and it can be very unsettling.

Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it's like a law of nature.

By its very nature, film is supposed to be an accessible medium to everybody.