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

What are you - some kind of addict? Is this where you come to.

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

We can have our own choices in sex partners, but you cannot avoid birth and death. It's the content of all religion and art. We familiarize them and if we're more honest, we'd be far more relaxed about them.

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

I obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them.

I have a very, very secret drive to become a dilettante, without the pejorative overtones or the obligation to produce myself. There's so much to examine, so much to contemplate. I have enormous enthusiasm when I start a new project but then there's the meetings and the counter-meetings, the rehearsals, the struggles. You have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get your dreams realised.