I knew I'd never have the career Colin Farrell had. I was working in stuff that was, for me, not very challenging. My career wasn't going as well as I wanted it to. So I turned to writing because I felt like I had more to say, and I started writing every day.

There's more pressure as a writer. As an actor you usually just go, do your job, and go home.

All love stories rest on the leads, and if they work, the show works, and if they don't, the show won't work, no matter how good the writing is.

Instead of waiting around for someone to give you a job, you have to go and create work for yourself. It took me a while to figure that out for myself.

An artist attunes to what things are, which means sort of listening to the future, which is just how things are - I think time is a sort of liquid that pours out of hatpins, underground trains, salt crystals. So a work of art is also listening to itself, because what it is never quite coincides with how it appears, too.

I work in a business of extremes, so when you are with someone who is very calm and logical, it's a great kind of balance to have.

By the mid-'60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

As a creative person, you have to keep going. There's no defined career path. There's no security.