We all possess, like it or not, the people we know, and are possessed by them in turn.

Is that a good definition of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally - that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

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.

Humankind can tolerate only so much rejection.

I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.

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

There is a disconnect between the film Bond and the literary Bond which is their contemporaneity. I don't suffer from that.