I have never been motivated by money in my life. You can't make choices based on what the financial return might be.

I am, in fact, Superman. Every morning I wake up and go into a telephone booth and change my costume, and then go to work.

You go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.

There are a few writers that one has a relationship with that means, basically, you do whatever they say. One is Caryl Churchill, and the other is David Hare.

I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.

England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.

At school, I decided I wanted to be a director and then I went out and spent the rest of my adult life trying to be a director. It was really clear to me. So in that sense I was very lucky.

As soon as I know how to do something, I usually get bored with it.

I always say, 'I really need to take a break.' It's three days in and I'm getting pretty bored.

I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.

I would love to do something for TV... I wanna do 'Kavalier & Clay' on HBO as an eight-parter. It'll be so much better as a series, honestly.

My heart is the refuge where you will find everlasting love.

The carcass was still warm - barely a few minutes dead, with the blood clotting on the ugly wound on its head where Pinchez had bashed it in with a brick.

There is something so attractive about a man who is able to laugh shamelessly.

I can only think how good life on earth can be, at times. What grief two people can give to one another! And what pleasure!

The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.

But a lot of shows, they pose questions and they give you a puzzle where there's no solution.

Supply yourself with a mental equivalent, and the thing must come to you.

As the number of studies increased, it became clear that writing was a far more powerful tool for healing than anyone had ever imagined.

Taylor: what do you hear? Daisy: Nothing but rain

I listen to music cinematically. I think about music and how it would make me feel when it's put to an image, a moving image, and I love it.