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.

If the American taxpayer knew how much they paid per person to put Neil Armstrong on the moon they would never have paid it. It was hidden from them deliberately because the costs were astronomical.

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.'

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.

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

As soon as you think you can do whatever you want and you have whatever great professional in the world waiting to work with you, then you are sunk.

That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It's such a powerful force.