I don't think anybody came into the movie business to be unoriginal and plagiarising and not having an original idea in their brain.

I'm not a Little Englander. Historically, British people have always been travellers. I look in the world as one place. You have to think in a global sense. Cinema is a global endeavour. My roots are in England but my endeavours are worldwide.

My advice to American filmmakers is to marry a European. I'm not kidding. Otherwise they don't qualify for international co-production treaties.

I grew up performing in glee club at my school; I was the ostrich in 'Peter Pan,' and then I was super-involved in church choir and worship leading at my church. So I always loved music and was involved with it, but never really thought it was what I wanted to do until I started writing.

I always loved writing, be it creative writing for school or just poetry. I just loved writing, and in college, I started really trying to write songs and was copying other artists, just to figure it out - but I think freshman year of high school is when I realized, 'I want to be a writer. I have something to say.'

I think life is about having the mixture of the curiosity of an older person and the imagination of a child.

Whatever China I'd been born into, I would probably still have become a painter - I loved sketching portraits as a child, and began art classes at the age 7. But if China hadn't been under Maoist rule, I might never have become a writer.