Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

We are also fortunate in being in quite a sheltered environment in terms of people moving on to do other things because there are relatively few companies in Scotland that are looking for the skill set that we've developed.

I can tell you one thing Iran is closer to developing nuclear weapons today than it was a week ago or a month ago or a year ago. It's just moving on with its efforts.

The kind of pace that you want to use in a Western - just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel and the way things develop sort of slowly - it's almost the antithetical of what's currently going on in the movies you know.

You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless but there's a lot of work that goes into it.

The process hasn't changed but the writer has developed. I still get up every morning and go to work.

I am on my way to Ghana tomorrow morning and you just need to know that this Administration is very focused on doing all we can to promote economic development in this part of the world in Africa throughout Africa North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

There is both a skill factor and an effort factor in dream recall. People can develop dream recall skills such as lying still in the morning and writing down whatever comes to mind.

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake when your mind is just drifting you have no censorship you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time.

A development deal is where they're giving you recording time and money to record but not promising that they'll put an album out.