I always write as I like to write, and I've been thinking about it because I honestly didn't realize how different my stuff is, until I started looking at other people's scripts as a producer.

If you see, as I do, in edited film, you're going to end up as a director.

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.

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

The only answer to "Are you Beatles or Stones?" is, "I'm both."

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.

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.