But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.

To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom.

I'm more critical of the films I make than anyone else.

I would never be a television presenter. It's not something I could ever do.

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

Art is something that nobody laughs at and nobody makes any money out of is the attitude, which I would dispute.

Confronting a stadium audience, you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and, of course, you can't see the alleged billions watching at home either, so the degree to which you are intimidated is quite low.