It all starts with the script: it's not worth taking myself away from my family if I don't have something I'm really passionate about.

Movies are always in a state of locomotion. You start with a general idea of how it should feel and then you find you've got a runaway train. You have to race to catch up: the movie is telling you what it wants to become, and when that happens there's no greater feeling.

The animal has no intellectual capacity to justify or to find reasons to exist. An animal just exists because it's the natural thing to do.

I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience.

When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.

We all feel that if we have a crazy idea that might get laughed at, there's nothing wrong with seeing if there's a crazy writer out there who agrees with us and can take it to a crazy network and somehow bring something that's a little bit daft and edgy to life.

I think in terms of chapters. Every time I finish a movie, it's a chapter. When one of my kids graduates from school, that's a chapter.