It's something that I feel I know about, relationships between men and women. I like to write from the woman's point of view now and again, to get inside her head, to feel what she's feeling.

Most of my stories, if not all of them, have some basis in real life. That's the kind of fiction I'm most interested in. I suppose that's one reason I don't have much respect for fiction that seems to be game playing.

I guess my writing has changed as my life has.

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

I'm a huge animal lover - I love animals to death. I've got tortoises and three dogs, and I've had a million animals in the past. I just think that we should do all we can to take care of them.

I do think that same gender partners should be able to be married. Why not? If you share a life together than who in the world should have anything to say about it?

Johnny once described our relationship by saying we were as close as two people could be without being married.

The only thing I can ever do is make a film that I can respond to. I could not make a romantic comedy for college girls. I wouldn't know how that works.