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I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don't play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy - you just play a person.

My scripts are possibly too talkative. Sometimes I watch a scene I've written, and occasionally I think, 'Oh, for God's sake, shut up.'

I like it when you read a script and there's the part that you show to the other characters and then there's the part that only the audience knows.

I do read some of the scripts from America and, even though the themes or subject of the film is very interesting, and some of the scenes are very interesting, there is a tendency that they have to explain everything. There will be no dilemma.

Since its beginnings, American writing has been in dialogue with other literatures.

In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page.

Robert De Niro taught me how to listen, and how to be part of the conversation. It's not just about reading your lines and saying what's in the script; you have to understand your character, along with the other characters so that you can always respond.

With some writers, the script looks beautiful on the page, but nobody actually speaks like that.

I read a lot of script. In my opinion, most of them aren't good or aren't about people.