We can't help identifying with the protagonist. It's coded in our movie-going DNA.

Every great film should seem new every time you see it.

No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.

One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines.

To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.

You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.

I lost faith in the Oscars the first year I was a movie critic - the year that Bonnie and Clyde didn't win.

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people.

What every human being should do is eat a vegetarian diet based on whole foods. Period. That's it. Animal protein is bad for you. Dairy is bad for you. Forget the ads: Milk and eggs are bad for you.

I do not fear death. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.

Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.

My former identity was lying around, somewhere, fragmented and buried, like shards from an earlier civilization.

Writing, an expression of freedom, is an unobtrusive reflection of a contemplative soul.

What I am interested in, what I write and care about, exists in the slow lane, somewhere between hand-ploughed fields and a pint of real ale.

I am an ordinary person but carried to extremes.

The challenge is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.

There are many things in life more worthwhile than money. One is to be brought up in this our England which is still the envy of less happy lands.

Life is a journey, but don't worry, you'll find a parking spot at the end.

I can't play any horns. Every time I tried to take saxophone lessons as a kid ... I can't whistle. I don't know if that has anything to do with.

I'm just delighted that this woman I love can be a mum again.