A lot of what 'Funny Girl' is about, for me, is the experience feeling very happy doing a certain thing with a certain group of people. That partly came about because of having really positive experiences writing movies.
I only read the very best music books. Donald Fagan's memoir 'Eminent Hipsters' is great. Bob Dylan's memoir 'Chronicles' and Patty Smith's 'Just Kids' are both incredible.
There were authors I read as an adult who completely inspired me. But when I was a teenager, I got to hang out with Tom Stoppard for a bit. My mum was his wife's secretary. He was obviously super smart, but he was also approachable and normal. I think he was the first person I'd ever met who I'd thought, 'Oh, I see. There's a living in this.'
One of the depressing things one realizes as one gets older is how much of one's tastes and attitudes are simply products of economic circumstance at the time.
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.
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 do not wish to produce prose that draws attention to itself, rather than the world it describes.
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.
My computer is littered with abandoned projects.
I'm quite gloomy. I just am one of those people, vaguely lugubrious.
If it's not gripping you, you are reading the wrong book.
The Oscars are like a political campaign. You have to have the right candidates, and the people in Hollywood know what they are.
If you're 22 and got everything you want, what are you going to write about for the rest of your life?
