I love audiences, but they're not there to drive the bus. Whenever you ask opinions or anticipate opinions you can get pretty terrible art, or non-art. You need a single guiding intelligence, even in a collaborative form.

You can believe in originals only if you just don't know their context within literature. Certainly I believe in originality, but it lies with the teller, not the tale.

I have no reason as a director to have films go up in versions that I don't like. My only experience of film after ten years is honestly that if a picture doesn't get second-guessed you're looking at four Oscars, and if a picture does get second-guessed, you're not. I've got an advanced degree in that lesson.

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

I hate doing anything in offices. I either want to be out in the world or in my own environment - and it should be your own environment that you work in.

Refreshing honesty has been getting me in trouble since I was five, but it's probably had some positive effects - like not being a liar.

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.