I have learned that a bitter experience can make you stronger. I now boastfully say that I have a hide like a rhinoceros... and I'm smiling. It's an interesting thing.

An acid is like a woman: a good one will eat through your pants.

I just don't do anything fun anymore. But, that's dying, isn't it? I mean, you die in stages, right? You let things go in pieces.

Go away, dig a hole, do something else, come back and it magically rejuvenates your creative impulses and stuff.

Well, if you look at the whole story, I mean there's only Jews and Romans in the story. I mean I just wanted to flesh that character out and make that a drama about the people around Christ when he was going through this passion.

There are messages about civilisations and we are trying to be true to history as much as possible. We wanted all this to gel with some good theory about why these civilisations went down, why they weakened and crumbled. Because they did, they vanished.

What did one shepherd say to the other shepherd? Let’s get the flock out of here.