I'm a pretty chaotic person, but I'm also a perfectionist. It's a very unfortunate mix.

We made a film about the need for silence and withdrawal... and here we are at the epicentre of noise and excitement. Life is full of surprises.

I usually make films about what's on my mind at any given time.

I never work from the script. I get the script more or less.

It's always a good starting point to tell a story that has many layers.

I never made films like kind of career moves, like making this film in order to make that film in order to end up in Hollywood.

The changes are part of my writing process. When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.

'Ida' is about humanity, about guilt and forgiveness. It's not a film that deals with an issue as such. It's more universal.

For me, good films and good books are irreducible to a lesson. You can't just kind of translate them into one statement. On the contrary, the more you do that, the less wisdom in art there is.

Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.

The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.

I'm a fairy. I'd come and hear, "How was your day, honey?" And I'd be like, "I was a fairy. I don't know."

We have eco-friendly shrimp. We can make them; we have that technology. But we can never have an eco-friendly all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet. It doesn't work.

Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.

Playing with Queen was the biggest moment of my career. It was like living a childhood fantasy.

If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.

A woman always remembers. Remember that.

Experiments that crash atoms together could start a chain reaction that erodes everything on Earth.

I'm a free spirit. A spirit that evolves. I'm a diamond. I'm just refining it. Polishing it. Glossing it up.