The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don't know them, then something is missing.

And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.

You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.

Marketing is a very good thing, but it shouldn't control everything. It should be the tool, not that which dictates.

Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.

Too many films today feel formulaic and familiar. I prefer it when the familiar is made to feel strange.

When a book is just a plot, you know, two men fight for the love of a woman in a wild frontier, I immediately ask, 'Why?'

In marketing, the familiar is everything.

Mirrors are the essence of movies.

What makes God laugh is people who make plans.

Any change in form produces a fear of change, and that has accelerated. Marketing is the death of invention, because marketing deals with the familiar.

There are three sides to every story: yours, theirs, and the truth somewhere in the middle.

I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of the Perpetual Astonishment

A nation has a right to manage its own concerns as it thinks fit.

The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.

The journey is over. Love to all.

There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

If you're going to steal a car, don't steal a mail vehicle. They don't mess around. I mean, have fun, steal all the cars you want, but don't steal a U.S. Mail vehicle.

You can know who a person is simply by staring into their eyes.