I always think, when there's stuff that people don't like, I always say that if I have another success, I'll enjoy it more, but you don't really.

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.

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

Good storytelling for me is not so much technical expertise, which I know is applauded often; it's actually freshness of approach. It does mean you sometimes stumble and fall and make a horrible mess of things in seeking that freshness, but you should always keep trying to do that.

I find it difficult enough being called "Mr. Boyle," which as I age I'm increasingly called.

Your first film is always your best film, in a way. There's something about your first film that you never ever get back to, but you should always try. It's that slight sense of not knowing what you're doing, because the technical skills you learn - especially if you have a film that works, that has some kind of success - are beguiling. The temptation is to use them again, and they're not necessarily good storytelling techniques.

It's interesting, the worse things get in cities, the tougher that cities get, the more brutal the humor is. The tougher things people face, the darker the sense of humor gets and I find that incredibly optimistic.