Neil Jordan

“But everyone gets burnt, don't they? Certain things are outside of your control. I suppose the only thing you can learn as a director is to not put yourself into situations where it can get outside of your control. And that's what happened.”

“The most difficult thing is the organization of people and the expression of your intentions. It's very easy to have a picture in your head and to imagine that you've told everybody about what you need.”

“The End of the Affair is almost like a play.”

“Well, I suppose I'm interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.”

“Well, Company of Wolves was about that literally, about fairy tales.”

“It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.”

“Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there.”

“I hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions. That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter.”

“For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.”

“There's no point in making a film out of a great book. The book's already great. What's the point?”

“I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.”

“Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.”

“When you've written a movie, you then get together with a whole lot of people and make it. In many ways, I think it is far nicer to be with people rather than being completely solitary.”

“I took two years away from making films to write a novel.”

“The Company of Wolves doesn't belong in any category, so it's difficult to prepare an audience for it. It's not a horror film, it's not a fantasy film, it's not a children's film - so what is it?”

“The Company of Wolves is about how society teaches young women to look at themselves, and what to be afraid of. It's about a girl learning that the world of sensuality and the unknown is not to be feared, that it's worth getting your teeth into.”

“I can't do a film if I don't start with the writing.”

“In Dreams... well, I was slightly overcompensating with that. I was a bit like a director for hire, so maybe I was putting too much imagery that was familiar to me into it.”

“I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.”

“I've had three novels published, and I was working a little bit in theater in Ireland. I wrote one film script just to see what it would turn out like.”