“Are you a minor character in my tale, or am I a lesser figure in yours?”

“To be alive today is to have a story to tell. To be alive is precisely to be the hero, the center of a life story. When you can be nothing more than a minor character in somebody else's tale, it means that you are truly dead.”

“I mean, he was something that happened to me, you know? But before he was this minor figure in the drama of my life he was - you know, the central figure in the drama of his own life.”

“Respect your characters, even the ­minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's.”

“I've never been part of the minority before, never have had to struggle to belong, so I figured I'd milk the experience for all it was worth. Don't they say adversity builds character?”

“They make you settle for second best."That's what I like about the movies. There's always some minor character standing round to tell you the moral, just in case you're too dumb to figure it out for yourself."You never get what you want.”