I want to make movies that pierce people's hearts and touch them in some way, even if it's just for the night while they're in the cinema; in that moment, I want to bring actual tears to their eyes and goosebumps to their skin.

If you grow up ... in the suburbs of anywhere, a dream like this seems kind of vaguely ludicrous and completely unattainable, this moment is directly connected to those childhood imaginings. And for anybody who's on the downside of advantage, and relying purely on courage, it's possible.

I have to believe I got some kind of say over our lives.

My children have never watched any of my films. Charlie knows that daddy makes movies, but he says they are not good enough for him to watch.

It's such an intimate experience, being a director, artistically. It's deep and it's satisfying and it's wonderful, on so many levels, but it's also really scary.

I think that if there are problems in journalism they're created by journalists... the trivialisation of the news and the sort of snyed, cynical allowance of untruth to be in a newspaper because it might be titillating.

Imagine what you will be, and it will be so.