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.

I find my own pain and others' difficult to tolerate, so I always want to try to shift things so they'll be better. But in doing that, if I am coming from a place of ego, I often cause harm. So it's a struggle for me to set my ego outside and find a softer and more compassionate way of approaching things.

I made this film 'The Beach,' which didn't take place in a city, and it didn't really suit me.

I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something's been confirmed for them about life.

Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.

You can't tell someone they are wrong about their own life.

One of the traditions of film acting is a sort of mumbled realism. Be minimal, and do less. 'Even less than that.'