Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.

People say you never remember anybody who dies in movies, and it's true, you don't. You don't even remember people who disappear. Although the moment that it happens might be terribly sad and moving, five minutes later, if you're asked to remember that person, you go, "Oh right, yeah, yeah!" 'Cause you're just moving forward.

I think women assess time passage much better than men - because of their biological clocks - and they are much more realistic about measuring out time, whereas men tend to hang onto things. Women acknowledge the biology of their time, and dance through the beat of that drum...whereas men just drum.

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

Both of my sisters have been teachers and they used to say you get asked between 300 and 600 questions every day which you have to answer. That's exactly what directing is. And the vast majority of those questions are not very interesting really, but they need somebody to make a decision - a good one or a bad one - and they follow it.

Celluloid will be the next decade's black and white.

Brian Cox is the nicest guy, but he's so arrogant.