Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.

I was born William. My father was William. I came from a big family, I hated being called Billy. Willem's a nickname; it's a Dutch name, very common in the Netherlands.

The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't passionate about what they're doing.

The English Patient' is about the coming together of a French-Canadian nurse, an English patient, a Sikh in a turban and me, Caravaggio, and each of us is seeking a resolution to our own problems.

Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.

I never act. I simply bring out the real animal that's in me.

Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can't. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.

The mask can be a limitation, but you just deal with it. You do get superhuman strength and pumpkin bombs and all this other stuff to express yourself with.'

You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action.

I guess they often cast me as the bad guy, because I'm not, er, conventional looking. I look sort of violent. I'm the odd one out, the outsider.

Remember, a person's character is not only judged by the company he or she keeps but also by the company he or she avoids.

His work was defined by emphasis on the subversiveness philosophy, which asks questions, as opposed to the self-satisfaction of politics, which believes it has answers and insists on them.

I'm taking a bit of a wait-and-see attitude towards 3D.

If I had known I would influence so many guitarists, I would have practiced more.

I refuse to see literature as amusement, as a game. I think that you ought not to approach literature without a moral responsibility for every word you write.

I take inspiration from everything around me, also relationships and friends. And the inside of my crazy head.

Death is the ultimate boundary of human matters.

We heard of White & Green Revolution but now we need a Blue Revolution & harness the potential in fisheries sector.

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

When life is too much, roll with it, baby.