There's no point in making a film out of a great book. The book's already great. What's the point?

I hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions. That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter.

Is it fair to have given us the memory of what was and the desire of what could be when we must suffer what is?

For me, the filmmaking has to be about the dramaturgy.

Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.

Never make a promise - you may have to keep it.

Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there.

Well, Company of Wolves was about that literally, about fairy tales.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

If movies have to satisfy every possible quadrant before they're even made, they're dull. You only get great things when people overreach themselves.

I'm less comfortable making American movies because I don't know them so well.

The graveyard is the everlasting home of every man.

Greatness radiates from the lights of love and wisdom.

If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones.

He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.

And why have you burnt our Gods, when others are brought from other Regions by the Spaniards? Are the Gods of other Provinces more sacred than ours?

The radiant sun sends from above ten thousand blessings down, nor is he set so high for show alone.

It wasn't that [he] believed in religion, or a God, or an afterlife. He just knew it was impossible to feel this much love and for it to end.

One has to live with the ignominy of a garish sticker slapped over one's face, proclaiming '?

When I look back on my life, I wonder how I survived - my mother said I had a guardian angel.

I was always self-taught, there was no-one to study with when I was doing composition.