The empirical is very important, but merit is inherent and not acquired. A university is massively important because you can see where you stand naturally in the ranks, and try yourself out, but education is just reading and understanding what you read.

If you're playing around with a film, you're just playing around with it. But if it has to go into theaters, you get yourself into gear and finish it.

I'm not a precious text protector, or anything like that, you know, because it's a much more vital form than that. You have to rock.

By the time someone gave me some samples of standard screenplays I was already beyond that stuff, because I was not only a tinkerer in ways to do things, I'd started from Dylan Thomas. As a screen dramatist he was a very intense visualist, with great timing and fluency.

When I was young I was only thinking of writing, and whatever was going on was unreal and comparatively unimportant.

I never write with particular actors in mind.

I'm a homebody, as many writers are, and need to be by myself, and I like to be by the Atlantic Ocean.