I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I'm getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I'm just trying not to get into that sort of state again.

Something like trying to protect yourself all the time, things like trying to outwit fate. Those things can be the worst thing you can do for yourself.

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There's always this sound out there that's just a little bit beyond my reach and I'm trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

I'm trying to have everything that I put into the world be something that makes a difference in the way I want to make a difference.

I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?

Finding a good band is Iike finding a good wife. You got to keep trying till you find the right one.

I feel like I've reached an age where I can relax a little bit with the knowledge of what I've been through, take all that experience and use it. I love the challenge of trying to get back to where I've been, and beyond it.

I was going to shave it. It went in two parts. I got a bob first but it kept falling all over my face. Then it was off, short. The main reason it was long was because my mother cut it short when I was little and I was trying to make up for that.

Collecting intelligence information is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. You know, in hindsight It's great. The problem is there's a million dots at the time.

I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.

Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that's continually trying to erode that.

The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.