I love that sense of change that you'd get in pop music every three minutes, every four minutes.

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.

There's lots of things that can be solved with cash.

Basically, actors arrive in a bubble. They have a little sealed bubble around them and it's basically [comprised of] their agents, their last film, their next film, their press agent, and their per diems - all these things, they cocoon themselves with and you have to puncture that bubble on each of them to make them be in your film.

I always wanted to make this film or another film. I thought the worst thing you could do was to react to Slumdog's success in some way. I thought it would be really foolish.

It's a nice way to put the focus back on this simple act... if someone creates you.

One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.