I've been many kinds of writers in my career: novelist; tele-playwright; short story writer. As a high-school student, I wrote amateur pieces for fanzines, and I've written for Hollywood.
Directing is for pussies.
Any film that you make, it's a very high end game of musical chairs. . . but that's just the nature of filmmaking. You do the dance with a certain actor.
I think when you write a script, you can't help but pick up on what is happening in the press at that time and what's going on in the newspapers, so you reflect on that and you feed it into your stories in some way.
I think writing is one of the toughest things.
I get ill when I'm writing because I'm so focused on it, and it can take a year or two. Often, I knock out the first draft very quickly. I can do it in five to six weeks. Then, it takes a year of rewriting it and rewriting it.
You can't make a sculpture until you've got a lump of rock.
It gave me a chance to re-evaluate my life and my career. Cancer certainly gives things a new perspective. I would not have won the Tour de France if I had not had cancer. It gave me new strength and focus.
Macbeth is contending with the realities of this world, Hamlet with those of the next.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
I'm paying for a mistake I made