I can't think of anyone who has done anything remotely useful after the age of 80.

There are basically only two subject matters in all Western culture: sex and death. We do have some ability to manipulate sex nowadays. We have no ability, and never will have, to manipulate death.

I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realising all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.

I wanted to make a cinema of ideas, not plots, and to use the same aesthetics as painting, which has always paid great attention to formal devices of structure, composition and framing.

There's more religion in my little finger than there is in the pope. But no, I don't believe in God. I am an athiest. A Darwinian evolutionist.

The Sistine Chapel is an extraordinary work of education - it lays out all the early books of the Bible.

My audience is comprised of three categories. The first category contains the people who decide after the first five minutes that they've made a mistake and leave. The second category is the people who give the film a chance and leave annoyed after 40 minutes. The third category includes the people that watch the whole film and return to see it again. If I'm able to persuade 33% of the audience to stay, then I can say that I've succeeded.