You create this human being, and then you are that human being for the next six months. It's amazing. I think that's the blessing and the curse of being an actor. You get to be pretty much anything you want to be.

I don't see myself as an actor. I see myself as a storyteller.

It's inspiring being surrounded by people who do more than you. It makes you want to do better. You're in the position to learn from the best.

We are driven by the same fears and the same loves and the same ambitions and the same desires, whatever language we speak.

Every reader re-creates a novel - in their own imagination, anyway. It's only entirely the writer's when nobody else has read it.

When the imagination and will power are in conflict, are antagonistic, it is always the imagination which wins, without any exception.

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.

People, certainly in the U.K., look down on screenwriting as an art form, but I love the discipline of it. Next to the bagginess of novel writing, it almost feels like a martial art.