I find it ironic that happy endings now are called fairytale endings because there's nothing happy about most fairytale endings.

I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad.

I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema.

I see the job of directing as being one of creating the right atmosphere, creating an environment where people can realize their full potential.

Every time I make a film, I feel it gives me the chance to learn something new.

Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad.

Modern, not bottom-dwelling literature like a carp.

I was known for a while for doing very long takes, especially after Atonement.

I don't make a division between an art film and commercial art.

I feel more in touch with the world when I'm filming.

Generally, I've never known quite how to fit in in civilian life, but on set, making a film, I know exactly where to go, how to behave and how I fit.

I was born not to die but to live and never born.

Let me be kind and loving today because tomorrow is far far away.

If you know that you have had countless lives, then what happens in this life is not quite as traumatic.

If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land gets tossed in jail on a vagrancy rap, may I not attain highest perfect enlightenment.

The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you. My subject: how to explain to you that I don't belong to English though I belong nowhere else

If you spend a week at a casino you will very easily see that people have a certain way of behaving in a casino.

You shouldn't be ashamed of your pain. You have the right to have your pain treated.

A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.

The more opinions you have, the less you see.