I'm always after putting people in extreme circumstances. I'm always after not knowing what I'm doing in those extreme circumstances.

Everybody expects you to be qualified to talk about your films, but in a way, you're the least qualified person to talk about them. When you're finished, you don't watch them at all.

That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It's such a powerful force.

To be a film-maker, you have to lead. You have to be psychotic in your desire to do something. People always like the easy route. You have to push very hard to get something unusual, something different.

I've sort of escaped my background, as people often do, through art and culture.

I learned with 'The Beach' that I'm a bit better lower down the radar.

Film industry is a pretty brutal business. If you fall too far behind, all of the perfectionism in the world won't save you.