Martin McDonagh

“All my work shares a kind of balance between black comedy and sad and despairing melancholy.”

“I hope there's some kind of morality in all my work.”

“I pick and choose what I want to do at any given time, and what not to do, importantly. My agents, I won't hear about any offers or options.”

“I can go anywhere. In fact, for 'Three Billboards,' I was just getting on trains around America. I wrote everywhere from New York to New Mexico. I always write with pencil and paper.”

“I don't even subscribe to writer's block being a truthful thing. I've had writer's laziness quite often. But I think it's all about sitting down and facing down the blank page and doing it,...”

“The fact that ticket prices are way too expensive, and there's only one bunch of people going to see Broadway shows, is something I've never liked.”

“I'd love to do something like 'A Canterbury Tale,' because I love the English language.”

“I guess I've accepted that theatre is never going to be edgy in the way I want it to be. It's too expensive for a start. And, the audience seems to be complicit in the dullness.”

“With a stage play, they can't cut a word; you can be in rehearsals every day, you cast it, you cast the director, too; the amount of control for a playwright is almost infinite, so you have...”

“I've got a fondness for rabbits.”

“Ireland was an idyllic place for us as children. We had all these cousins and all this green countryside. Given what I've written about rural Ireland, my memories of it are all blue skies an...”

“I suppose I walk that line between comedy and cruelty because I think one illuminates the other. We're all cruel, aren't we? We are all extreme in one way or another at times and that's what...”

“I never, ever drink while writing. Never have from the start, and I'm happy that I never have to. A lot of my stuff is plot-driven and mathematical, and I think you need a clean and sober mi...”

“I try to naturally keep things to a manageable storytelling length, which is about two hours, so you try to cut out anything extraneous.”

“I loved 'The Master' a lot. I'm not going to get to work with Daniel Day-Lewis, but Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best around, I think.”

“'Pulp Fiction' is an amazing film, and I haven't made one nearly as good.”

“I never feel like a smug or a smart-alec film director, and there are plenty of those around.”