Often it’s the deadline, to be really honest. Also, research is my favorite part. I could just research forever. But then I actually need to produce. Maybe that’s why the offering part is so beautiful, because each offering/performance is different because it’s a different time, it’s a different space, and I’m a different person. Each day you’re a different person, and because the people you’re doing this with are also different, the work changes. Maybe you’ve found something else that inspired you, so you add it and let the work grow. It grows infinitely, alongside you. With video, it’s set, so it’s harder to add to it even if sometimes you’re kind of like, “Oh my god, I would love to add this.” With embodied practice it’s easier. It grows with me. That’s something I love, especially because my research never ends. It’s ever evolving.

I don’t think I ever really know when a project is done because I make projects that could keep going on forever. For me it’s a balancing act, feeling confident enough in the work and feeling like I’ve exhausted a sense of what else could be done with it. I usually get to a certain stage where I’m very, very tired and I’m not interested in it as much as I was. And that’s a good time to end. Sometimes it’s just about saying, “I’m tired. I’ve learned a lot. We’ve gone a long way, and now the film needs to leave me, and be in the world.”

Sometimes some of the things I’ve been working on for years and years, they’re just not getting any better or not going anywhere, so they fade away. And sometimes you start something, and within a few days, it develops enough that it feels complete. Each piece is different and develops itself in a different way. Some artists make the same thing for 50 years, and that doesn’t interest me. My current show at Lisson Gallery will be my 18 th with this gallery, I’ve been working with them since 1974, and all the shows have been different. You don’t repeat a show. So this solo show is comprised of pieces I’ve made in the last three years.

I don’t think any of my plays are done right now.

I always dreamt of having a second stomach I could carry around in a bag, which I could attach to my real stomach when I sat down in restaurants. That way, I could eat a huge amount, never gaining weight.

Sitting down to a leisurely conversation in an English tearoom with my wife, a friend, or even an interesting stranger. Good cake is essential.

I’ve been emphasising here the small and the private, because essentially that’s what my work is about. One person writing in a quiet room, trying to connect with another person, reading in another quiet – or maybe not so quiet – room. Stories can entertain, sometimes teach or argue a point. But for me the essential thing is that they communicate feelings. That they appeal to what we share as human beings across our borders and divides. There are large glamorous industries around stories; the book industry, the movie industry, the television industry, the theatre industry. But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?

The reason why so many vivid, undeniably convincing characters in novels, films and plays so often failed to touch me was because these characters didn’t connect to any of the other characters in an interesting human relationship. And immediately, this next thought came regarding my own work: What if I stopped worrying about my characters and worried instead about my relationships?

Actually, I had done what I thought was more or less a finished version of The Remains of the Day , but the very buttoned-up narrator, the butler — in that earlier version, he doesn’t quite come through confessing his true emotions. He maintains his front a little bit more effectively than he does in the final version. What made me change my mind was that, between that penultimate version and the final version I handed in, I listened to a song by Tom Waits — another great singer-songwriter, remarkable artist. And this is the power of that art form: it’s performance as well as the actual writing.

Like Joel McCrea’s character at the end of the movie Ride the High Country. (He says something about “entering his house justified,” sits up to take a last look at the scenery, then rolls contentedly out of the frame.) Or like Bill Nighy’s character at the end of our film Living.