. . . it is true that language and forward movement in the cinema are jolly hard to reconcile. It's a very, very, difficult thing to do. . . . There is still a place in the cinema for movies that are driven by the human face, and not by explosions and cars and guns and action sequences . . . there's such a thing as action and speed within thought rather than within a ceaseless milkshake of images.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

Smiles are the language of love.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

To those whose God is honor; only disgrace is a sin.

No one but a fool is always right.

Are we simply waving farewell to the days when some of the most interesting thinking in Europe and America came to us from our fiction film-makers? BBC2, which once introduced and showed great films, now shows none.