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.

I had a long writing history behind me before I got into anything in film. It comprehended science fiction, it comprehended historical, it comprehended, you know, just about everything that you can think of.

If you decide to do Hamlet in a funny hat staged in a ruined factory, it doesn't make you Shakespeare.

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.

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

The thing about The Departed, the x-factor that people can't quite put their finger on, is that it deals clearly with class and accent all these things that are fundamental to Boston, but previously anomalous or even prohibited in demotic American films.

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.