Martin [Campbell] is very energetic and precise. He'll on the set like four hours early with a flashlight and I thought, well, I'll certainly try to be very neat about my script like Martin, which I wasn't, but I'm not going to do that bit with the 4AM and the flashlight. I'd love to be able to say I was nervous, but I wasn't. The only time I ever had anxiety it turned out to be asthma.

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.

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.

The thing about movies is if somebody has an idea that works, it's in, and I say that as a screenwriter as well as a director.

They're done by guys who have talked a good game and then have scrambled together the simulacrum of a drama, so actors are habituated to sometimes having to save a picture on the floor because it's usually part of their job, but they'd rather have a writer doing his job, so that they can do theirs. But I like nothing better than working with actors.

London matters to me because it's the center of what I do for a living and has been since Tudor times.

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