The empirical is very important, but merit is inherent and not acquired. A university is massively important because you can see where you stand natu…

- William Monahan

Refreshing honesty has been getting me in trouble since I was five, but it's probably had some positive effects - like not being a liar.

- William Monahan

Even though a screenplay is performed only once, unlike other forms of drama, it's still a performance in itself, and unless it's a great performance…

- William Monahan

When I was very young, you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald, and you would basically go through them, circle things, and map o…

- William Monahan

I think that scripts should be published, but they are published, really, because when you're a screenwriter, your stuff ends up in samizdat form on …

- William Monahan

If you need someone to come out of the sewer with a wire you don't hire someone who needs laborious collective instruction. You let someone do his jo…

- William Monahan

I don't like scripts leaking. On the other hand, the more real attention a script gets, the better.

- William Monahan

When I was young I was only thinking of writing, and whatever was going on was unreal and comparatively unimportant.

- William Monahan

It wasn't just British gangster films that really did for me as a kid, personally, it was British films in general.

- William Monahan