I don't think we've seen any cinema yet. I think we've seen 100 years of illustrated text.

We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse.

If you're a Shakespeare fan, isn't that a way to negotiate sex and death?

In a world where we can all be our own filmmakers, the old elites are disappearing and there is no desire to look at somebody else's dream anymore because you can go off and make your own.

Human relationships are patterned and cross-patterned and restricted and limited and delimited and caged and freed again by the elaborate conventions, rules and games which we call civilisation. They're often absurd and farcical, and sometimes they're tragic, yet we acknowledge that they are necessary.

I think my films are very English. That certain emotional distance, interest in the world, interest in irony. These are all deeply English propositions.

As for critics, one mediocre writer is more valuable than ten good critics. They are like haughty, barren spinsters lodged in a maternity ward.