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

I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory.

My favourite film-maker west of the English Channel is not English - but to me doesn't seem American either - David Lynch - a curious American-European film-maker. He has - against odds - achieved what we want to achieve here. He takes great risks with a strong personal voice and adequate funds and space to exercise it. I thought Blue Velvet was a masterpiece.

We all live to a formula. Maybe the secret lies in keeping that formula secret.

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.

I don't think we've seen any cinema yet. I think we've seen 100 years of illustrated text.

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