My belief is that no movie, nothing in life, leaves people neutral. You either leave them up or you leave them down.

Without any doubt at all, teacher quality is the fundamental differentiator. Not just, incidentally, of education, but I would argue, probably the biggest single differentiator of success for the nations of the 21st Century.

I've always sensed what a script should sound like - even before the movie's been made

If it's not true, don't say it; if it's not right, don't do it.

In the U.K., the history of regulation, certainly regulation of the media, is one in which, time and again, successive governments lacked the 'bottle' to enforce the powers that were available to them.

The most important thing I think teachers can do for young people is to make them inquiring, is to ensure that they know how to gather information, that they check information and they take their information from a multiplicity of sources.

I'm not naive enough to pretend that on its own cinema can capture the very soul of significant social and cultural problems.