The fact is that war films, by their very nature, are pitched at a high dramatic range.

I actually think every war movie is an antiwar movie in its own way - with the exception of some of the propaganda movies.

So to be standing here, this was really, truly, honestly never part of anything we even imagined in our wildest dreams.

For better or worse, most of my writing life has been about people that work behind the scenes. I'm interested in finding extraordinary moments in otherwise normal people.

I write on a computer, on a laptop or whatever.

Ever since 9/11, I found myself interested in chronicling the war and the war on terror and the way that this giant machinery was affecting individuals.

You're trying to dramatize events to tell a story most effectively. That doesn't mean the events aren't true, it just means you're making them as dramatic as you possibly can.

I think as a filmmaker you try not to have any expectations other than that the film have a fairly substantial beginning, middle and end.

I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.

I am not a commercial industry creator. I don't believe in making art to make money.

Poetry colors beings, objects, landscapes and sensations with a kind of new and particular light, which is in fact that of the poet's emotions.

The pyramids are one of those things that live up to the hype. They're elemental in ways that are hard to describe.

Television is certainly a writers-led medium. They're the ones who are there, they're the ones that are conferencing or whatever, with directors coming and going.

Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.

Twenty-plus-year career, 500 drug controls worldwide, in and out of competition. Never a failed test. I rest my case.

How was it possible to wake up every day and be recognizable to another when so often one was barely recognizable to oneself?

Instead of wiping away your tears, wipe the people who make you cry.

I won't glorify or romanticise heartbreak, for me it was a kind of death and I was forced to keep living.