Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.

I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.

If we just sit and exist, and understand that, I think it will be helpful in a world that seems like a record that's going faster and faster, we're spinning off the edge of the universe.

Eradicating a religion of kindness is, I think, a terrible thing for the Chinese to attempt.

The tone of the picture and the atmosphere was in my head and in my blood in a way once I'd decided to make the picture. I had to find my way through that to choose, select, emphasise certain visual elements and sound.

Well the thing is that the New York of 1846 to 1862 was very different from downtown New York now. Really nothing from that period still exists in New York.

Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.