We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse.

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.

I've screwed everything up royally. I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit belongs to them that believe and are not of this world

I'd made my choice, though, and I couldn't take it back.

When a monk complained about the world's evil, the Buddha stretched his hand toward the Earth: "on this Earth I attained Liberation".

I don't hold doors for women. I'm not sure I really differentiate between men and women, in my door-related activities. Do women really care about this issue?

Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.

I believe in a glamorous life, and I live a glamorous life.

Keep active - do something physical each day. Could be as simple as taking the dog out for a walk (if you've got a dog!), but could be going for a swim, or going to the gym every day.

If anything runs deeper than a mathematician’s love of variables, it’s a scientist’s love of constants.

It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion