You're familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics?

My scripts are possibly too talkative.

I smoke too much whether it's going well or badly. After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just out of eye line.

A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.

I really enjoy working on adaptations.

I consider myself to be a very fortunate person and to have led a very fortunate life.

The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the defense of the realm, and other matters - raising revenue to pay for things which are for all of us, and so on. That idea has turned turtle now. The state isn't any longer perceived as an institution which exists to serve us.