If you feel people getting on about what you are doing, it gives you a lift.
I don't like when I look too cluttered.
"The Theory of Everything" is an extraordinary story because [Jane Hawing] was incredibly religious and [Stephen Hawking] was an atheist, so you have this conflict both on a domestic level between a couple in a difficult situation but also this bigger conflict of science versus religion, so it's a really fascinating project.
I think [Charles] Dickens was an extrovert and Nelly [Ternan] an introvert, and I think that Nelly saw beyond the fame and adulation and she actually loved Dickens essentially for who he was. So I think he felt like she was someone he could be himself with.
I cannot stand beer. But I love wine.
Those moments when you don't feel self-conscious, when you escape that, are when you produce something meaningful.
I was into Virginia Woolf and James Joyce [at university] and I think we all thought that [Charles] Dickens wasn't that cool.
There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.
I tend to write first drafts that are incredibly cognitive, very rational, very boring. They come off as justification. Like, 'This is my idea and here's all the reasons that it's right. ' It doesn't make for very compelling reading.
Catch the beauty of the moment!
The possibility seems to be that what we call styles, or what we call motifs, are actually categories in the unconscious.