The good thing from my perspective is that nobody puts any pressure on me to say what it's going to be. The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.

When I was young I used to sit in the cinema thinking wouldn't it be great if you could have a film in which the characters were like real people instead of being like actors.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.

I hope I make films where you walk away . . . with work to do, arguments to have, things to worry about, things to care about. In that sense, I would regard what I do as political.

My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either your relationship works or it doesn't.

But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you’re not snooping into somebody else’s lives?

There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.

I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.

The way an actor is trained doesn't ultimately have much bearing on my work. I'm interested in the actor as artist.

It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically.

Tree is tree.

He bit back a weary sigh and tried to remember strangling her would solve squat.

The greatest risk in life is not to take a risk.

A person full of the Holy Spirit cannot be full of self. Pride never accompanies power in the fully yielded life.

The books you love best - those are the immensity of the sea.

There are people who don't respond to color. That's what painting is. It's color.

I think life is instinct, and I just really go by that. That's one of the things I've learned - to always trust my instinct and it's always served me well.

Any kind of crisis can be good. It wakes you up.

I feel like the American years were my apprenticeship for doing a Bond movie.

Still hiding and afraid to let go. Waiting for you to find me uncover me and show me the way.