You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film - you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.

My preference is that, that day when someone sticks a tripod in front of you with a camera on the top, it is not day one.

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

I don't torture myself. And I do the work because of the pleasure involved. I'm satisfying a compulsion I find nigh-on irresistible. It's not necessarily because of the work itself. I just feel the need for a period of regeneration afterwards. Like leaving a field fallow when you've grazed too much on it. I feel depleted.

Be grateful, be grateful, be grateful.

I still relate to my father very much. I mean, I talk to him in a certain way, as we do talk to the dead.

I don't know what impression you might have of the way I live. I live in a quiet place. I do not live as a hermit, though other people would prefer it if I did.