We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity. If you can make them sufficiently uncomfortable, they frequently respond by doing what you need them to do in the spirit of setting people free or ceasing arrests.

If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

And using that - the birth of a religion, it suggests that you have got two tests. You have the test of weakness. When you're weak, do you compromise, do you bend, do you give in, do you accommodate? And then the test of strength. When you're strong, are you merciful, are you generous, or are you cruel?

My grandmother was very fierce and gruff. She was quite small, but she was very wide.

I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.