If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it's an educated audience as well.

It's interesting to think that my children know more about the process than many mature critics.

My gratitude to Ridley [Scott] isn't anything new. I named one of my kids after him. But he's a very important person to me.

You're not turning the picture over to a system or a process, you are the process, and the most important thing is to have things exactly as you want them.

In Boston terms I was everyone and no one, with no social investment, no social insecurity, sort of Imitation of Christ in one hand and The Education of Henry Adams in the other, and because I was part of nothing I could observe everything without having anything personal invested in the findings.

I think the only real referent for anybody writing drama is probably Hamlet. You have the most extreme tragic drama, this sort of blood-boltered thing, but it's also very funny, which is simply a matter of the playwright being alive and observant and entertaining, and understanding not only the world but what will play.

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.