While I was editing, sometimes I would have these free associations, so maybe I would not have had that shot of the naked people if I had not found the files. I allowed myself that things would happen in the film, even though I had organized my trip in the boat and to rebuild the courtyard, and all this.

In order to end up with anything you can use, you have to excavate a whole bunch of stuff you can’t use, and get it all out of your system, and then go back later and chip away at all the terrible stuff that you’ve uncovered, and find the things that go together, ideas that go together, and motifs that feel like they keep coming up; and then, reassemble a piece of writing that way. That’s also what I do for my own stuff.

What I usually do is write a draft or two and I won’t think too much about the length. Usually my scripts don’t go over 110, 120 pages. I’m pretty good at that. Then I know I’ve got a record of that and whatever jokes are in there. Eventually I’ll read it once or twice, usually once, and then delete it off my computer. Put it somewhere, a drive somewhere, and get it off my computer. And then I rewrite it again from memory. Based on what I remembered from reading it.

Sometimes, there will be songs [for which] I finish the lyrics years later. I try not to listen to my own music until time has passed. It’s like, “Maybe I should have put that word in there.” But I think it’s because I studied English literature, for me, the most important part, the bit I get the most out of as a consumer of music, as an enjoyer of music, is the lyrics. So for me, I really care. I try things out, I try different versions, I will sing different versions, and it’s a sort of long process [that] feels like I’m excavating dinosaur bones with a little toothbrush.

Find the friends who do that. Find the friends who never tell you that you can’t do it, but who point you in the right direction, hold you when you fail, and push you when you need the push. Those are hard friends to value sometimes, but they are the best of friends.

He asked me to go through the evidence of the cases, which I did. And at the end of it he said, “Well, you have one thing missing.” I said “What, I thought I covered all of the bases. I made the best arguments that I think the evidence would support.” And he looked at me, and he said, “That may all be true, but you’re missing passion. You related this crime and your evidence in a very impersonal way. How did you make the jury want to convict?” I said “Well, the judge charges them, tells them they have to convict if I prove my case.” And he said, “No, sentencing, not sentencing, finding someone guilty is a huge responsibility. You have to make people believe it’s what they have to do. And you have to make them believe that the evidence that you’ve presented gives them basically no choice.” And so I said, “How do you do that?” And he explained to me that it’s in the manner that you present your case. It’s in the manner that you show how passionately you believe in what you’re doing. And in how much you believe that you’ve actually proven your case and that they must return a verdict of guilty. And his words have led me to believe that that passion is what guarantees success in life.

And in many, many parts of the world, if you’re going to deprive a parent of custody of their child, you better give them a lawyer. And we don’t. We have an unequal representation of people in our court system. And that does, I think, provide an injustice that we don’t pay enough attention to.

I tell the kids that I speak with on these book tours that my greatest legacy will be the last child who remembers something I’ve said or done that helped them manage something in their life. Once I die, I will be alive through that last child whose life I helped make easier in some way. And that, I hope, could be a very long time.

I think I have been mentored by many extraordinary judges in my career, but there’s one in particular that probably changed the course of my life on the court. And that’s Justice John Paul Stevens and the one year we overlapped.

Well, what's very interesting is that those people read our opinions which can be, at moments, rather animated. An animated exchange in writing among the justices. And many people who read our opinions think we have to be at each other's necks constantly. It's interesting we're not. When we're talking about cases at our conference it's generally a conversation. It's really a talk about what our perspectives are and why we have reached the conclusions we've reached.