If I could be more vague I'd write more about people in my life but I hate hurting feelings or making people feel uncomfortable. I've done that before. Unless they're sad songs. Those get finished fast but the mean ones often end up at the back of the bottom drawer and it's probably for the best.

I never get scared making these kinds of movies because it's all make-believe but I did cry when I saw the finished version of Man On Fire because it is so sad.

I respect newspapers but the reality is that magazine 'photojournalism' is finished. They want illustrations Photoshopped pictures of movie stars.

I've just finished my next collection Possible Side Effects and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.

Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life in politics. When I'm finished with my term as governor I'm going back to the life that's waiting for me in the private sector.

We recognise in the finished art which is the result of these conditions the best words in the best order - poetry and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

A poem is never finished only abandoned.