In some ways, you could argue, television is doing far more interesting work than the movies. It's more fulfilling.

I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.

There's a sense in all my novels that nothing is certain.

When you experience bereavement at a youngish age, you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen, and you have to take that on board.

Writing a film - more precisely, adapting a book into a film - is basically a relentless series of compromises. The skill, the "art," is to make those compromises both artistically valid and essentially your own. . . . It has been said before but is worth reiterating: writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath.

It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.

Dignity was the first quality to be abandoned when the heart took over the running of human affairs.