The notion that acting is simply about intuitively responding to situations the way you feel couldn't be farther away from how I ask actors to work.

When I was young I used to sit in the cinema thinking wouldn't it be great if you could have a film in which the characters were like real people instead of being like actors.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.

I hope I make films where you walk away . . . with work to do, arguments to have, things to worry about, things to care about. In that sense, I would regard what I do as political.

My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either your relationship works or it doesn't.

But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you’re not snooping into somebody else’s lives?

There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.

I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.

The way an actor is trained doesn't ultimately have much bearing on my work. I'm interested in the actor as artist.

It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically.

Grab it while you can because tomorrow could suck you dry.

Look to the past to see what the future holds.

I've spent a life loving women and studying them as much as I can, or am allowed to.

The ego constantly competes with the spirit for control over your inner voice.

Science is global, but solution is local.

Even my going back to school was to inspire young people that it's never too late to education. That's all I can do, and try to be the best father and husband that I can be.

Unreasoning prejudices are bred out of the continual living in the past

Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence.

The advent of self-government for the Iraqi people is a watershed moment in their history.

If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.