The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.

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.

To be a power to reckon with you need to believe in yourself and your dreams.

I never really did Christmas before. Christmas Day? I mean - what's that? What's it all about? I was always flying on Christmas Day.

We've heard this before; 'things are bad, we are gonna fix them,' and they remain unfixed.

A mode of knowledge rooted in silence and intuitive insight which gives meaning to life but which cannot be explained in rational terms.

We are what we eat, it is often said, but of course that's only part of the story. We are what what we eat eats too.

I have no idea,' he tells her, and there is such a spark in his eye when he says it, she can tell having no idea is exactly the way he wants it.

Look, if I'd wanted a lecture on the rights of man, I'd have gone to bed with Martin Luther.

I do still like television very much, but the theatre does really have something special about it.

I became a millionaire overnight by signing a piece of paper. I made more money in that one second than my entire family did in their lifetime.

In the end, one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet republic or over world capitalism.