When I'm in London, Claridge's is a great favourite. I'm a big fan of art deco architecture and the rooms are extraordinary.

The more you travel, the better you get at it.

In my films that I've directed, and my work in commercials and videos, I've rarely used handheld. It's just not something I'm drawn to, but I've seen it done very well.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

As a director myself, you really appreciate collaborating with people who are trying to help you find what you need and what you want.

I really value distinctive movies, movies that feel that they came from a person that was really something that they had conceived and they made and is a reflection of who they are.

I love 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' and I love 'Bugsy Malone.' I haven't seen 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' in a long time, but I remember loving it as a kid.

A movie that I'm involved with and have a lot of love for, which is On The Road, does use a lot of handheld. It can be done beautifully. I'm proud of that. It's a very beautiful movie.

Sometimes in writing you have difficult periods and then other times it just flows.

Relationship movies are often made for a female audience.

As a director myself, you want to have colleagues and collaborators that respect your authority as the director. I'm very comfortable with that, and I've done a lot of work in second unit.

The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

The invisible is only another unexplored country, a brave new world.

I do abs every day: regular, weighted crunches and sit-ups every other day, then my obliques and my sides on the alternating day. So I’m working my core every day.

Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian ones.

It's what's on the record not what labels on it. You know, that's like getting a box of cornflakes and eating the cardboard.

I don't belong to any country clubs. I don't have this big circle of friends. Where I make my friends is where I work.

I shall die as I have lived, rationalist, socialist, pacifist, and humanitarian.

When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct?

I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren't all that different. All your life you've been training to forget yourself, so when you're in danger, it becomes your first instinct