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" I think that every book that's in a bookstore should entertain in some way. "

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" When you see the poet laureate saying that every child should have read 'Ulysses' and that you're just giving up on children if you think it's elitist - does that include children with special needs or whose first language isn't English? "

" I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal. "

" It takes me two to three years to write a novel. A screenplay is 100 pages and takes five years. "

" Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways. "

" We need a romantic illusion to embark on relationships in the first place. After that, they survive or fail for other, more practical reasons. "

" It's like when you get sick of your own cooking: I occasionally wish I could write something that didn't come out sounding like me. All writers must experience that. "

" I'm really not a big rereader - I'm too aware of my own ignorance. "

" The Oscars are like a political campaign. You have to have the right candidates, and the people in Hollywood know what they are. "

" The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can't, it might not be your inadequacy that's to blame. 'Good' books can be pretty awful sometimes. "

" I kind of stumbled on the material for 'An Education' and thought it would make a good movie, and one of the things that came out of that, for me, was that I learned that if you write a big part for a girl or a young woman, you get the opportunity to work with the best talent in the world. "

" It wasn't until 1963 that you would really want to listen to any kind of English music. "

" I only want to write books and movies about women. "

" 'An Education' was a complicated piece of work because it came from a tiny essay, so it took me a while to find the story I wanted to tell and the characters I wanted to tell it about. That really only emerged after four or five drafts. "

" I'd say I got into Marvin Gaye properly in college. "

" All the Oscars stuff for 'An Education' was incredibly exciting, especially because it was such an underdog project - no one would give us the money for it, and we all nearly gave up because it wasn't getting anywhere, then suddenly a breakthrough and this really lovely film, which then took on a life of its own. "

" You can't really ask for anything more than to be working for your entire life - and to be doing something that some people respond to. "

" When you're adapting a novel, there are always scenes taken out of the book, and no matter which scenes they are, it's always someone's favorite. As a screenwriter, you realize, 'Well, it doesn't work if you include everyone's favorite scenes.' "

" Words don't come very easily to me. Which, given my profession, is a worrying impediment. "

" At a crude estimate, I must have played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times. "

" I think quite a misguided literary culture has grown up in the 20th century that says a book has to have a seriousness of purpose and a seriousness of language. "

" With 'Brooklyn,' I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I just had a very strong sense that if I turned the volume up a little bit, it could be something really special. "

" Screenwriting is about condensing. "

" I wasted the 1980s. I wasted every minute at Cambridge talking to people who knew more about music than I did. "

" I hated teaching Shakespeare. In order for the students to understand what was going on, you had to tell them the story of 'Macbeth' or whatever. Shakespeare is about character and language, and they didn't get any of that. "

" Lots of times when I'm offered things, I can't see how a story gets filmed. Either it's too internal or it doesn't have a strong spine. "

" I can't stand it when writers moan about what film-makers might do or have done to their books. There's a very simple answer: don't take the money. "

" The more screenwriting you do, the more you become aware that particular scenes aren't going to end up in the movie because they're too expensive. That has perhaps changed the way I think about writing novels, actually, because now I write expensive scenes whenever I can. "

" Dylan's 'Chronicles' is easily the best rock n' roll memoir ever written, as far as I'm concerned. There aren't many stories in there, but if you want to know where an artist came from and why he thinks the way he does, then that's the one. "

" The most important thing for me is realism. I don't like writing which does somersaults on the page, and I'm no great fan of the hard work literary novel. "

" I've never met anyone who is seriously bad. "