I burn with no causes.

Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. But to me, the trick in life is to take that sense of generosity between kin, make it apply to the extended family and to your neighbour, your village and beyond.

The hard part is getting to the top of page 1.

Sometimes I watch a scene I've written, and occasionally I think, "Oh, for God's sake, shut up."

I feel overestimated.

It's probably unprecedented for a filmmaker simply to take the writers' script and treat it as the instructions on the package. What really happens is you pretty much suppress your own instincts - and your own views on the matter - and write things the way filmmakers would like to have them, though the filmmakers often don't know what they want. They can only find out by reading what you do.

You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.