I'm very lucky. I actually like screenwriting. I rarely feel a sense of doom going to my desk.

As a child growing up in a grey-skied Yorkshire village, I would occasionally happen upon a Bollywood movie on the television. After a few minutes watching a bunch of sari-clad dancers cavorting on a Swiss mountain to tuneless music, I would switch over to some proper drama about housing estates and single mothers.

One doesn’t question a miracle.

Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life.

Keep your central character moving, discovering, learning.

There isnt a more important issue in the world than global warming. Even the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs crisis were a notional threat.

When you make a movie, a dramatization based on the real experience of a living subject, you cant airbrush that away into to a perfect movie arc.

I guess my approach to adapting books is to treat them with a deep respect on one level and at another level part them to one side and go, 'I'm doing something completely different here.'

They say crying makes the heart lighter