Doing crime films...maybe it's to some extent a matter of taste. Certainly my first novel had a criminal element and was about the similarity of criminals and artists. Pretextually, it was sort of a money bag thriller. But it was aggressively not what it seemed to be. It was kind of Duchamps.

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.

In reviewing films, people get quite liberal about saying "the script" this and "the script" that, when they've never read the script any more than they've read the latest report on Norwegian herring landings.

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.

I never work until I have a deadline. You have to fit so much in a given day that you just don't get serious until you know when the deadline is.

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

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.