There's lots of things that can be solved with cash. And there's occasional things that can't be solved with cash, which become a bureaucratic nightmare for some reason, and there's no distinction between the two. There's no way of reading a situation and saying, "Yes, that'll be a bureaucratic nightmare, but that one we'll be able to buy off." It just depends on the day, apparently.

I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days.

If you approach India in the right way, you have so much to learn there about people, and there's so many people. It's such an extraordinary setup, and it's so bewildering how it manages to get through somehow, you can only wonder at it.

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.

I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it's humor that's often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.

Most films that I do, whether successful or not, just fade away. They have their moment in the sun, then they are gone. 'Trainspotting' did not, and especially with journalists. So whenever I launched a new film, I'd end up talking about 'Trainspotting.'

The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.