The most important question for me when I begin working on a film is where to start. For a book, what makes you convinced there is a story that is worthwhile?

I'm getting a little bored by the juxtaposition of American and other cinema. I no longer think this division is as true as it might have been in the 1980s, or the early part of the 90s.

Without dreams, there can be no courage. And without courage, there can be no action.

Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.

My advice is, don't spend money on therapy. Spend it in a record store.

Every photo, every 'ONCE' in time is also the beginning of a story starting 'once upon a time...' Every photo is the first frame of a movie.

Film is a very, very powerful medium. It can either confirm the idea that things are wonderful the way they are, or it can reinforce the conception that things can be changed.

The more opinions you have, the less you see.

I think sometimes you have to just imagine something that looks pretty impossible. By imagining something that is impossible, automatically you wish you could make it possible.

For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.

Photographs put time into such a perspective. They humble us and our selfish memories.

The more we focus on who we are in Christ, the less it matters who we were in the past, or even what happened to us.

I am a sportsman and not a politician. I am a sportsman and will always remain one. I am not going to enter politics giving up cricket, which is my life. I will continue to play cricket.

I'm so happy to be in a committed relationship.

Well, I sing by night, wander by day. I'm on the road and it looks like I'm here to stay.

As with the onset of sudden celebrity, for the newly rich, the world often becomes a darker, narrower, less generous place; a paradox that elicits scant sympathy, but is nonetheless true.

Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

A lot of things are yours, America

Though the barriers of life seem formidable, we find when we challenge them that they have no will.

Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.

Smoking cures weight problems, eventually.