A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious. He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return. There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit. Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation. My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane. Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved. Sentimentality - that's what we call the sentiment we don't share. The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him. | 
