If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song.

You have to be like a clock spring, wound but not loose at the same time.

I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds.

The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

I'd like there to be consistently more women's storylines going on at the same time.