A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known.

I don't think I have the kind of creativity to write fiction.

I am quite certain in my heart of hearts that modern music and modern art is not a conspiracy, but is a form of truth and integrity for those who practise it honestly, decently and with all their being.

My imagination was really hyperactive as a child and animated. I had those elements, but as you live and go through the hardships, it fades. 'Pete's Dragon' reawakened that. It rekindled the feeling of the invisible dragon.

Growing up, I think I always had a sense of art: a sense that there was poetry in the world. I didn't know where I was going to find it. I didn't know where I was going to fit in, that was for sure. But I kept moving forward. There wasn't a future in anything other than movement.