I never write with particular actors in mind.

I've always been a bit repelled by "Sunset Boulevard", which is wrong about almost everything it touches, whether it's fame, Hollywood, screenwriters, or old ladies. Sunset Boulevard would only make sense to me if it was about John Gilbert and the pool boy.

I'm not very precious at all, which I think people find surprising.

You just have to know what you want and what you're doing and it leads to a kind of general well-being, which I think you sensed when you were there.

Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

T.S. Eliot, who learned to swim at the same beach as I did, just threw in the towel and moved to Cheyne Walk. I'm not going to do that but I'm not scared of the open channel between me and Britain.

On historical you take the known facts, dramatize them, and then stitch them together by invention. It's a projective thing.