40 Quotes by Christopher Hampton

My problem is I’m a man of no convictions – at least, I think I am.

I think there’s something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It’s humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement,’ I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

You know very well that unless you’re a scientist, it’s much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn’t pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with.

I’m ashamed to say the first play I saw at the Royal Court was mine.

It’s possible to disagree with someone about the ethics of non-violence without wanting to kick his face in.

Often I think the novels I read won’t make very good movies – I better not say which I’m looking at for potential films! – but it’s nice to have an excuse to just sit and read for a whole day.

I love films. If I’d known how to get into or do it from the word go, I would have done that.