Look, if I'd wanted a lecture on the rights of man, I'd have gone to bed with Martin Luther.

The good thing about those original credit card commercials was that they were very "filmic", they were like little movies, so it wasn't a big step to think well maybe we could make a big movie using this character, which we eventually did.

The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression.

[Georges] Simenon could be very brave like that. You never quite know what you're going to get or how the story's going to be told.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is the most over-rated human being since Judas Iscariot won the A.D.31 'Best Disciple' competition.

It certainly helps, I think, with some actors to understand the process of acting. You see what extraordinary pressure they're under, there's a huge circus dedicated to a particular moment and they're got to deliver and it can help that you, even if empathetically alone, understand what they're doing.

The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.