You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.
To seduce a woman famous for strict morals, religious fervor and the happiness of her marriage: what could possibly be more prestigious?
If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women.
I think there's something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.
A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.
I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.
If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.
Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.
Often I think the novels I read won't make very good movies - I better not say which I'm looking at for potential films! - but it's nice to have an excuse to just sit and read for a whole day.