I really, sincerely believe that one should trust the work, and not the author.

I do indeed think that cinema is mortal. There is a lot of evidence already that it is dying on its feet.

I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium.

Since Caesar, we know his historians are liars. The good writers get read. Bad history doesn't get read.

My heroes among filmmakers would be people like Buñuel and Pasolini, who were of very high cinematic intelligence, but tread on a lot of toes.

Tulse Luper, who without too many confessions, in a sense, is a fictive version of me. I have to say he has far more exciting adventures, and certainly a lot of them sexual, than ever I've experienced. But in a sense, what you do with an alter ego, you give them all sorts of permissions and licences which you know you'll never be able to embrace in your real life.

Life is full of a thousand red herrings, and it takes the history of a civilisation to work out which are the red herrings and which aren't.