Sometimes you are lucky enough to get offered things and there is no rhyme or reason.

The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.

If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable, rather than its literal narrative.

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

Firms are a bit concerned about things like oil prices and US growth but actually the change (in firms expectations) is quite small so I think broadly theyre looking for more of the same.

I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.

Generally, I read nonfiction. Theres very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.

Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.

I just try and do something good. But as a writer, you're slightly out of control.

I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.

The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.

The Church right now has more fashion than passion, is more pathetic than prophetic, is more superficial than supernatural.

We begin to die as soon as we are born and the end is linked to the beginning.

The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.

The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe.

Every time I look into his eyes I just want to take the ice cream or whatever I've got in my hand and rub it into his face. That's how much I like him.

I view my role now as providing more of a macro-level skepticism, rather than saying this poll is good or this poll is evil.

Sure, there are many bad things that can happen. Yet you can be aware of them, and realistic about them, without being obsessed and consumed by them.

Christ does not choose you because you are good, but to make you good.

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom...

I come from a long line of women who like shoes to a fault.