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

I like to think of The Falls as my own personal encyclopedia Greenaway-ensis.

I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

We are all united by the phenomenon that we have a body and that body is universally the same, more or less. If we lose sight of that perspective, everything can desperately suffer.

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

We live in a time of excess - excess population, excess information.

The start of a film is like a gateway, a formal entrance-point. The first three minutes of a film make great demands on an audience's patience and credulity. A great deal has to be learnt very rapidly about place and attitude, character and intent and ambition.