Richard Curtis Quotes

You have to remember that in addition to running a literary agency, I am also an ebook publisher.

We are taking a business-as-usual position at my agency, though business before 9/11 wasn`t that hot either!

I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text.

We now open our mail with gloves and mask, though I can`t imagine why anyone would target a literary agency!

Except for a few small presses, most publishers are north of Ground Zero.

The worst moment of my life was when I watched Notting Hill and thought: `Oh, God, it`s exactly the same as Four Weddings and a Funeral.` I`d been working on it for four years and it never occurred to me...

I like to work with people who are fond of me, who really know me.

I do send out information about my books. Very few people buy the books that way, but I always feel that if they want to know more about the process, they can get the information from my books.

The key factor is whether the agent is a member of the Association of Authors` Representatives, which screens its members and requires them to uphold a Canon of Ethics.

You won`t find many people who`ve had an easier ride in movies than I.

Again, we turn down most books that have been self-published unless they have a special track record. We have taken a small number on, however, and sold them to major publishers for a nice sum. But that is an exception to the rule.

I think it`s a responsibility of people who have had very lucky lives indeed to try to spread some of that around.

We are forced by the major publishers to include electronic rights in the contracts we make with publishers for new books. And there`s very little we can do about that.

I didn`t decide to be a writer. I wanted to be an actor and I turned out to be very bland, so I would always get cast as a character from Twelefth Night called Fabian, who hides behind the hedge and doesn`t have any funny lines. So I decided I would have to write my own lines.

The real effect of the WTC calamity has been depressed spirits, anxiety, and uncertainty among publishers, and of course those emotions are not restricted to publishers.

It`s always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan.

Laboratories can reduce risk by implementing a proven and internationally accepted quality assurance technology that is applicable across the globe.

Anything that is wrong with a film will come back to haunt you forever, so I take a long time writing, fix everything, underline bits that I thought were funny when I first thought of them because they won`t be funny when I look at them later. Oh, and I put the word `fuck` in a lot.

I think I had a very lucky break when we asked Mike Newell to do Four Weddings. Mike is a very serious, beautiful person, a wonderful director. What he succeeded in doing was to hide the fact that the original script read much more like a series of sketches.

Never, ever in any of our films have we thought `we`ll do this for the American market`, Sometimes we`d change a song or a name or the word `arse` but on the whole we try to make movies for home and then just hope they`ll work in the US.

If you write a story about a soldier going AWOL and kidnapping a pregnant woman and finally shooting her in the head, it`s called searingly realistic, even though it`s never happened in the history of mankind. Whereas if you write about two people falling in love, which happens about a million times a day all over the world, for some reason or another, you`re accused of writing something unrealistic and sentimental.

I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.