I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.

Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone.

And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.

And that is how I employ my time in cinema, saying things about people who I think have touched us in terms of our value judgement and by example.

I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.

I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.

I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.