Even if people are all from the same place, there can be very, very different approaches. It's one of the things I'm fascinated by. It's why I like directing. I like to see how different people approach trying to be truthful, on camera or in the theater, and whether you can make them match up.

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.

I don’t feel in a kind of race or competition with him or anybody else, because that kind of reactive thing isn’t good, or isn’t useful for natural creative instincts

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.

After Frankenstein, I feel as if I want to make a film about somebody having a nice cup of tea.

I come from the theatre, my bones are in the theatre; it’s as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre

Somehow I know there was something so right about my doing Frankenstein and taking so long over it that I've probably been laying some ghost inside myself. It was a very necessary job for me to do, but it'll take some time to recover from it.