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

There are those who think that Zeffirelli's Hamlet is the way to treat Shakespeare. I think that cinema can handle much more. We somehow expect cinema to provide us with meaning, to console us. But that's not the purpose of art.

For so many filmmakers, cinema is a means to an end.

I have transmitted genetic material, all I have to do between my daughters' birth and my death is to decorate my life.

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

English culture is highly literary-based.

Many quite popular films are filled with violence. I think the difference between those and my films is that I show the cause and effect of violent activity. It's not a Donald Duck situation where he get a brick in the back of the head and gets up and walks away in the next frame. Mine have violence which keeps Donald Duck in the hospital for six months and creates a trauma which he will remember for the rest of his life.