Movies tie things up in an arbitrary length of time, but I have always liked things that aren't fully realised.

I've become wary of interviews in which you're forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you've done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive.

Ed Harris seemed to be as a man, it seems, like a Clint Eastwood, this country is one that has produced more than one of this kind of man that's iconic and enormously appealing to the world, as part of American film culture.

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.

If I can't make the kind of film that I want to make, then the hell with it.

I think Ed Harris is a conscious screen actor, so I think it was strong, it was like he put everything together somehow in 'The Way Back'. He likes, I don't want to say the method approach, because that's not really necessarily his way of working, but it was easy to do because of the location. He'd go off by himself, and they would make things.

Casting the right actor for the right part is some unspoken thing between the two of you to communicate.