I hate doing anything in offices. I either want to be out in the world or in my own environment - and it should be your own environment that you work in.

The novel ceases to be looked at as a novel. Such is the overwhelming power of motion pictures. Gore Vidal pointed out that the movies are the only thing anybody's really interested in. The association with movies and movie money can, and certainly did in my case, occlude a novel as a novel.

As first time director, though, you're like a new officer coming up to be in charge of very serious veterans, and you're always going to have guys looking at each other for the first day until they realize you're not screwing around.

You evolve in the ways in which you are precious. When you are the director, you are also continuing to write on the floor as you go along.

When I was a kid in London there was just something about the light and there's something about the way London went onto film in those days, whether it was Technicolor or Technicolor plus the flatness of the light, or whatever.

Get Carter is a classic, but it did nothing in the United States. It came out on a double bill with a Frank Sinatra western.

Dialogue is used to reveal not what we want to say, but what we are trying to hide.