In issues of recent ethnic wars and genocides - particularly if you look at Darfur - one of the most remarkable things is our inability to act, still, despite the years of analyzing and re-analyzing what it does to subsequent generations. We still find a massive inability to step in and step up to the plate, when genocide is happening as we speak.

Is it appropriate still for a German to have a gun? I only use that as an example of a country that's still deeply involved and engaged in the conversations about how to come to terms with the past. Certainly for that country, it's not forgotten.

It's disingenuous to say that criticism doesn't get to you or you don't hear it or that you ignore it. When everybody says, 'That's crap. I hated that,' you hear it. But it's much, much worse when they're right: when you feel that it is an absolute piece of tosh. I made the film I wanted to make, so you just have to find a way of getting over it.

Most theater methodology is predicated on the idea of repeated actions. That's what you work toward. Having the actor repeat the same moment eight times a week. In a film, it's getting that one moment right.

The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea what's going to happen next. That goes quite soon, as people start talking about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it.

The really successful work in England tends to be working-class writers telling working-class stories. The film industry has been slow to wake up to that, for a variety of reasons. It still shocks me how few films are written or made in England about working-class life, given that those are the people who go to movies.

The truth of the matter is, every film is imperfect. It's the nature of the beast. One of the things that people ask me all the time is, what's the difference between theater and film, and one of the biggest differences is, in the theater you always get another go.

There are a few writers that one has a relationship with that means, basically, you do whatever they say. One is Caryl Churchill, and the other is David Hare.

Well, there are three different processes of making a film, of course. They're sort of re-written three times. You write it to start with, and then you shoot it and you re-write it while shooting and you sort of re-write it as you edit.

With journalism, films always have to be to do with some personal statement of your own. As a general rule, I resist that. In the States, a question that kept coming up was this: 'How can you, as a man, talk about three women?'

Actually, to be honest, this is a useful time to not be knowing what I'll be doing in 2013 or 2014, because really, for the last however many years, I've known what I've been doing for years and years ahead. You get into a cycle of non-reflection, and that gets a bit scary.

As soon as I know how to do something, I usually get bored with it.

I always say, 'I really need to take a break.' It's three days in and I'm getting pretty bored.

I am, in fact, Superman. Every morning I wake up and go into a telephone booth and change my costume, and then go to work.

I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.

I have never been motivated by money in my life. You can't make choices based on what the financial return might be.

I would love to do something for TV... I wanna do 'Kavalier & Clay' on HBO as an eight-parter. It'll be so much better as a series, honestly.

One of the great joys of my job is that you spend a huge amount of time investigating different areas of literature.

Ring up your parents and ring up your kids and tell them that you love them.

There has been one defining production for me in each decade.