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

I went into directing having observed and learned from the best. There was a certain standard of procedure. I found that I was equal to it. I thoroughly enjoyed directing, I liked it a lot. It's very satisfactory to see that you can do it. The art takes care of itself.

If you change a location opportunistically, to gain a day on the schedule, which I did more than once, you have to re-rig everything creatively on the spot, and you not only have to be able to do that, but do it with great fluency to keep moving. I used to go apeshit when anything got changed in a film but you live and learn, and I have learned.

I don't have an aversion to quote unquote remakes, because I understand what dramatic writing is, what the dramatic profession has always been about, which is talent, not the pretext for its exhibition.

I have a lot of stuff that I never published because I always had a sense that novels were not finally going to be the way I made my living, because the form was dying commercially.

I don't move until an actor is happy, but it was very important to me as a so-called "first time director" to keep the machine moving. It was especially important to me to keep it moving and not be some kind of precious writer-director.

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.