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" 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. "

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

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

" If adults are not enjoying something they're doing in their leisure time, they should stop doing it. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I always thought 'Of Mice and Men' was such a perfect book because there's nothing not to understand, but it's still really clever and moving and complicated, but everybody understands the complication. "

" '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. "

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

" Writing is about confidence and wondering what the point of anything is. "

" When someone says they've read your book 15 times, you think, 'Well, you should read something else.' "

" Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it. "

" I have the same interests as women. Well, apart from football and music, obviously. I've always had as many female friends as male ones. The novels I read as a young man were all by women writers, and when I started writing, I wanted to set my books inside the home. "

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

" If you can get every kid to have found a book that he or she loves, then you've done a great job. "

" It seems to me quite often that the journeys of young women are more moving because they are hemmed in more, and dramatically it's more interesting to think about and write about people whose lives are circumscribed in some way. "

" The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score. "

" When most people come in from work, 95 percent of them reach for the remote control. Then they read before they go to sleep, to get off to sleep. They do that because reading feels like a duty, and TV feels like fun. "

" Football really felt like a private thing when I was in my teens because it wasn't on television, for a start, apart from 'Match of the Day.' "

" I like writing about popular culture. It helps to place people. I think you can be really, really accurate if you know enough about it, and place people precisely. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" Screenwriting is about condensing. "

" Home was extremely normal. But my dad's life was quite exotic, really. When I went away to stay with him, it was a different world. I never wanted to be in that world. I was much happier with my mates at home. "

" Why are we scared of a '50s weepie? Why are we scared of a movie that pulls you in and punches you in the stomach? "

" I can remember my father gave me a huge history of football for my 12th birthday - I used to read that a lot. I can remember thinking it was cool that something I was interested in even had a history. Most things I loved didn't. "

" 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. "

" If it's not gripping you, you are reading the wrong book. "

" I always naturally want to change things up if I possibly can. I never want to write a sequel to a book. I don't want to go back over things. I don't want to adapt my own books for the screen. That's something that's important to me, the keeping it fresh. "

" People love Jane Austen, even though those books are absurd to us, because we like the clarity of it: we can see very clearly what Elizabeth Bennett has to overcome, what she has to deal with. "