About Thatcher's death: Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out on competetive tender and accept the cheapest bid. That's what she would have wanted.

A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage.

Maybe if we tell the truth about the past, we can tell the truth about the present.

The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator.

The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is.

A film is one small voice among other large ones. The film is a tiny part of the discourse. You do what you can but under no illusions of what a film can do.

One lesson to learn is that the press and the broadcasters are not neutral. And it seems we have to learn it each time there is a dispute: they are actually committed to one side.

Shaping it is something I would expect to do together with a writer, because that's a director's job.

You'll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone.

In the Darwinian environment of business, one's most provocative words are naturally selected by competitors to be hurled back at them at the most inopportune moments. Do not arm your adversaries.

It must be hard just to be someone's girlfriend.

So we recast the wisdom of the great thinkers in the shape of our illusions. They are shiny from their makeovers, they are fabulous and gorgeous, and they want us to know that we can have it all.

The person of power uses their power to open up their mind to higher levels all the time, which creates tremendous happiness.

You are very familiar with Western ways, but you are too young. You go everywhere to follow the big news, but the questions you ask are too simple -- sometimes naive.

If nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?

I've seen enough crazy shots to know they happen in the best of families.

Before he goes into the water, a diver cannot know what he will bring back.

Philosophy ought to be able to give an account of rationality that is not wholly detached from science's account of nature, even if it is not straightforwardly reducible to it.

I raised another shot. "That sound you hear is the heads of moral conservatives spontaneously exploding in the distance.