There are many photos of Eisenstein. I think he was quite vain, and he liked photos of him. Being a virgin at 33 is strange now, but let's not be too high-minded about that.

I've always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you've been, where you are, and where you're going -- in a sense it's three tenses in one.

I have always had severe problems with Austrians. ... Musical, churchy, uptight... nice legs... hypocritical... authoritarian... always insist their dustbins are very clean.

I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

I really, sincerely believe that one should trust the work, and not the author.

You can play lacrosse all over the world provided you know where the goalposts are.

I wanted to make a cinema of ideas, not plots, and to use the same aesthetics as painting, which has always paid great attention to formal devices of structure, composition and framing.

Works of art are never finished, just stopped.

Every historian has a vested interest. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was not about the Roman but the British empire. What price the truth?

I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium.

Only cinema narrows its concern down to its content, that is to its story. It should, instead, concern itself with its form, its structure.

Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place.

But the future must be met, however stern and iron it be.

In our environment, we have answers for almost every question we have, it depends on how sincerely we seek them.

I feel passionate about solving the climate crisis.

The dynamic element in my philosophy, taken as a whole, can be seen as an obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction.

In cities no one is quiet but many are lonely; in the country, people are quiet but few are lonely.

If we had fifty Eichmann's, we would have won the war.

To put all of your eggs in one basket is silly.

For every tear you shed for someone else's grief, it takes one off of their suffering.

My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.