My dad was a labourer and my mum had exactly the same job as Noel Gallagher's mum - she was a dinner lady at our local school. Everyone comes over from Ireland and they get the same jobs.

It's a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.

I grew up in a city, I'm a city person - I go on holiday and I'm bored.

There's lots of things that can be solved with cash.

I've just been to the Taj Mahal which I'd never been to and I'm not a very romantic kind of guy but it is the most romantic thing I've ever seen.

The sun is the most important thing in everybody's life, whether you're a plant, an animal or a fish, and we take it for granted.

I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile.

I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something's been confirmed for them about life.

If you have to be persuaded about something, you shouldn't do it.

I learned with 'The Beach' that I'm a bit better lower down the radar.

The awards season gives a chance for independent films to have a bit of longevity in the press and the media.

...oppression is as American as apple pie...

Women are not made for one single man

Perhaps that is where our choice lies -- in determining how we will meet the inevitable end of things, and how we will greet each new beginning.

Stop blaming people for not making you to achieve your dreams. The question is "are they the people having those dreams?

I think the other thing that shaped me a little bit is that I really didn't have any success in music until my early to mid-30s.

Makers of empire, they have fought for bigger things than crowns and higher seats than thrones.

A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul.

I hunted far enough to suspect that the Fathers of the Republic who wrote our Sacred Constitution of the United States not only did not, but did not want to, establish a democratic government.

All I ever learned at my mother's knee was what a bony knee looked like.

Leave that which is not, but appears to be. Seek that which is, but is not apparent.