One of the elements in the film that really fascinated me was not to look at the world in bi-polar terms of us vs them or east vs west, which was a by-product of the Cold War.

I'm drawn to filmmaking that can transport me. Film can immerse you, put you there.

The journey for women, no matter what venue it is - politics, business, film - it's, it's a long journey.

I don't want to be made pacified or made comfortable. I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going.

Something becomes personal when it deviates from the norm.

Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people.

It's irrelevant who or what directed a movie; the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don't.

Cinema has the capacity to be so physiological.

There should be more women directing; I think there's just not the awareness that it's really possible.

Films don't cause violence, people do. Violence defines our existence. To shield oneself is more dangerous than trying to reflect it.

I need to have my hands on the DNA of a film.

you cannot teach art—you cannot make a soul

If you want to zoom down the expert slope tomorrow, you have to fall down the bunny slope today.

The cinema is going to form the mind of England. The national conscience, the national ideals and tests of conduct, will be those of the film.

When you take a picture of someone, never show it to them right away. If they don't like it, they may erase it.

The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can't take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by.

I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.

Size is relative. If everyone is fat, no-one is fat

It is in the nature of truth not to be at fault.

The phrase "spiritual journey" is one that I've only become familiar with comparatively recently. We wouldn't have put it like that when I was a kid.

The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.