There are things that Scotsmen get and other people don't get in the dialogue. Scottish characters can be pinpointed by a phrase, targeted very quickly.

Perhaps naively I thought people understand what humor was, that it was invented by the human race to cope with the dark areas of life, problems and terrors.

The movie business is very much like that: people in authority making purely emotional decisions instead of interesting rational ones.

My two elder sisters married Englishmen and went abroad.

I'd made these experimental films but I thought the major chore of a filmmaker was to relate to actors.

It means that if they misunderstood Comfort and Joy, they misunderstood my other films.

I went to the Glasgow Youth Theatre and they just let me in. But I was so shy that I was there for about six weeks without actually introducing myself.

At the moment, my mother is the only one left in Glasgow, although it's certainly my home.

I didn't think Comfort and Joy was going to be a box-office smash.

It's easier for me to get three times the amount of money I really want.

I was quite surprised how easily people wanted to pigeonhole things I've done.

Spring and summer 1942 was probably the worst period of internal terror in Slovakia. It was also the time of mass deportation of Slovak Jews to the extermination camps in Poland.

There are very few pop people I'm interested in working with.

We need our Dads right now, we need strong fathers. I really want fathers to get close to their children.

The truth is rarely true and never simple.

A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice.

At NIH, what tends to happen is that the proven researchers tend to get the money. New researchers, younger researchers, or people on the cutting edge don't get the money until they have gray beards.

Art is fantastic, but it's also that you come to Paris, you call me, I come to New York, I come to visit you, we hang out together, and that's art.

Many casting directors won't hire aspiring actors because you might be burning some chick's headshot under the table so she doesn't get the part.

Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal.

Men fall in love through their eyes. Women fall in love with their ears, through words.