The more screenwriting you do, the more you become aware that particular scenes aren't going to end up in the movie because they're too expensive. That has perhaps changed the way I think about writing novels, actually, because now I write expensive scenes whenever I can.
Screenwriting is about condensing.
Lots of times when I'm offered things, I can't see how a story gets filmed. Either it's too internal or it doesn't have a strong spine.
With 'Brooklyn,' I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I just had a very strong sense that if I turned the volume up a little bit, it could be something really special.
I kind of stumbled on the material for 'An Education' and thought it would make a good movie, and one of the things that came out of that, for me, was that I learned that if you write a big part for a girl or a young woman, you get the opportunity to work with the best talent in the world.
Every time we pick up a book from a sense of duty and we find that we're struggling to get through it, we reinforce the notion that reading is something we should do, but telly is something that we want to do.
I would like to have a go at TV. I think, especially when you have kids, that you spend a lot of time watching telly, and you think, 'How come I'm not doing that?'
I spent as much time watching telly and films when I was a kid as I did lying around reading books. I think it's crazy that writers are only allowed to say that certain books have influenced them.
At a crude estimate, I must have played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times.
I'm quite gloomy. I just am one of those people, vaguely lugubrious.
I can't imagine writing a screenplay where I didn't feel deeply connected at some kind of visceral level to the material.
I have the same interests as women. Well, apart from football and music, obviously. I've always had as many female friends as male ones. The novels I read as a young man were all by women writers, and when I started writing, I wanted to set my books inside the home.
I love the detail about the workings of the human heart and mind that only fiction can provide - film can't get in close enough.
I have boys, and boys are particularly resistant to reading books. I had some success recently with Sherman Alexie's great young adult novel 'The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian.' I told my son it was highly inappropriate for him and one of the most banned books in America. That got his attention, and he raced through it.
