“A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be...” — Graham Greene Quote

“A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.”

“Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.”

“He had in those days imagined himself capable of extraordinary heroisms and endurances which would make the girl he loved forget the awkward hands and the spotty chin of adolescence. Everything had seemed possible. One could laugh at daydreams, but so long as you had the capacity to daydream there was a chance that you might develop some of the qualities of which you dreamed. It was like the religious discipline: words however emptily repeated can in time form a habit, a kind of unnoticed sediment at the bottom of the mind, until one day to your own surprise you find yourself acting on the belief you thought you didn't believe in.”

“Lots of people can write a good first page but to sustain it, that's my litmus test. If I flip to the middle of the book and there's a piece of dialogue that's just outstanding, or a description, then I'll flip back to the first page and start it.”

“People say it's cathartic to write a book, but it turned out to be quite painful!”

“This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.”