Thank you to my wonderful actors, the triangle of man-love which is Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and me.

I find that after a screening, people really want to come and tell you what they feel.

I think English film is very embarrassed by patriotism, generally.

I began to think that if you're a stutterer, it's about inhabiting silence, emptiness, and nothingness.

I think directors can become overly infatuated by gilt and gold, and the word "lavish" and everything being magnificent.

A lot of dramas get a bad name commercially because they are unremittingly bleak.

I think the thumb print on the throat of many people is childhood trauma that goes unprocessed and unrecognized.

The irony of a director going to film festivals is you never get to see any of the films.

American cinema tends to express a patriotic relationship to national identity on a regular basis.

Great acting is all about being in the moment, being in the present tense.

I decided to be a filmmaker when I was 12. I had utter clarity that this would be my life.

The sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart... converted it into a tomb.

I suspected, however, that I wasn't homesick for anything I would find at home when I returned. The longing was for what I wouldn't find: the past and all the people and places there were lost to me.

I don't see what's wrong with giving Bobby a little experience before he starts to practise law.

It's wrong to discriminate based on skin color when there are so many other reasons not to like someone.

Every person has parallel tracks. You have your personal life or your life as an artist, or whatever it is you do.

The generation of youth in the early 21st century has no way of grasping if they will ever be free from the gnawing sense of the transience, indefiniteness, and provisional nature of any settlement.

Among fifty percent of your married couples, the husband worries very little about what his wife is doing, provided she is doing all he wishes.

The only way you can get at the state is by dealing with its laws.

Philadelphia merely seems dull because it's next to exciting Camden, New Jersey.

Acting is a bit like tennis in that you can't really do it on your own.