The kind of acting that's wholly literary or cerebral is wrong. It's useless for me to have actors so much in their heads that they can't be organic.

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.

Grace is divine power of God.

My mother insured that a life of petty facts and dutiful farming was kept at bay by her passionate intensity, which nurtured the essential dreaminess of his nature

You have the power to mold your life how ever you want. To shape it and reshape it.

It's a sad comment on humans that none of them are tolerable to one who can read their minds

Contentment preserves one from catching cold. Has a woman who knew that she was well dressed ever caught a cold? No, not even when she had scarcely a rag on her back.

My dream was to be either a volleyball player or a veterinarian.

If you don't think it's safe, it probably isn't.

I have thick skin. I'm not a baby. Nothing really offends me. If there's something I think might offend me, I don't listen to it.

Giving up your ego is the shortest way to unification with nature.

The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.