-
Dublin people think they are the center of the world and the center of Ireland. And they don't realize that people have to leave Ireland to get work, and they look down on people who do.
-
I never feel like a smug or a smart-alec film director, and there are plenty of those around.
-
I guess I've accepted that theatre is never going to be edgy in the way I want it to be. It's too expensive for a start. And, the audience seems to be complicit in the dullness.
-
My plays are always pushing towards cinema anyway. They're down and dirty, real and more fun.
-
I went to Bruges for a weekend away from London. I was supposed to be meeting a girl there the next day. It was a tentative arrangement. From the moment I saw the town, I thought, 'This place is just so cinematic, so gorgeous.' Every corner seemed to offer a new image.
-
I probably haven't had enough gay characters in my stuff. When you're writing something, you're thinking, 'Why couldn't this person be black, white, gay?'
-
I realize that I am never going to grow up.
-
I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.
-
I don't find it easy for me to talk about me.
-
It's like two years straight out of your life doing a film. It's very enjoyable, especially working with the guys, but I kind of like the idea of traveling and growing, and developing as a writer and as a filmmaker.
-
I'd love to do something like 'A Canterbury Tale,' because I love the English language.
-
There's no point in me meeting with a bunch of producers or studios, because I'll write my own scripts in my own time.
-
When I'm happiest writing is just not knowing where it goes and just let the characters bring you there.
-
I seldom feel comfortable in a theatre. I always feel like I own a cinema. I feel equally happy in an empty one as a full one. Probably happier in an empty one!
-
I never, ever drink while writing. Never have from the start, and I'm happy that I never have to. A lot of my stuff is plot-driven and mathematical, and I think you need a clean and sober mind to pin down the logistics of that.
-
When I heard the Pogues, I connected with the songs immediately, but it was also the first time I didn't reject out of hand the kind of music that my parents had always tried to push on to us when we were growing up.
-
I won't work on anyone's else's script. I won't write for anyone else. I write my own stuff and make that when the time is right.
-
Though it may not seem like it, I never try to write about a place, per se; it's always, first and last, about story. Story is everything. Story and a bit of attitude.
-
I try to naturally keep things to a manageable storytelling length, which is about two hours, so you try to cut out anything extraneous.
-
Everything went perfectly on 'In Bruges.' It was constant warfare, but I won all the battles and was really happy working with the actors and everything on the film.
-
I can't stand up in front of people. It just fills me with horror.
-
I don't even subscribe to writer's block being a truthful thing. I've had writer's laziness quite often. But I think it's all about sitting down and facing down the blank page and doing it, and I've always been ok at that.
-
Ireland was an idyllic place for us as children. We had all these cousins and all this green countryside. Given what I've written about rural Ireland, my memories of it are all blue skies and endless play.
-
I'm not really into the fame side of things, so I'm very happy with making a film every four years or so.