To me, all success is a delightful surprise, since one can absolutely never predict it.

My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.

I think Americans are wonderful film actors - the best in the world - but they are a very contemporary race and they look forward all the time.

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.

If we don't respect the past, we'll find it harder to build a future.

Lust, that state commonly known as 'being in love,' is a kind of madness. It is a distortion of reality so remarkable that it should, by rights, enable most of us to understand the other forms of lunacy with the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. But, paradoxically, mad and suffering as one is, and the heat of the flame, few of us are glad as we feel that passion slip away No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.

I mean the truth is, I've always been interested in the whole setup of the old world.