You see, I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

To seduce a woman famous for strict morals, religious fervor and the happiness of her marriage: what could possibly be more prestigious?

I think there's something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

There was a moment in the early '80s when I wanted to work on films and wanted to live in L.A.

It's possible to disagree with someone about the ethics of non-violence without wanting to kick his face in.

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with.

I'm ashamed to say the first play I saw at the Royal Court was mine.

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.

I like L.A., but I think whats changed is that the kinds of films I do, the mid-range dramatic film, has become an endangered species.

A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.

Masturbation is the thinking man's television.

Masturbation is the thinking man's television.