It never crossed my mind to make a film about Muhammad Ali or the Queen or any of them! They just come out of the blue.

To be successful at anything, you need the right to fail, not just occasionally.

As a director, my job is to protect. I protect scripts, actors, cameramen, designers.

The only way you can learn about making films is by making them, by putting your stamp on the thing.

I teach film directing, inasmuch as you can. Its not really possible to teach film direction, but I sit there as a sort of testimony of experience and know-how, I suppose.

I basically just make films that interest me. And I don't want to make the same film twice, you know? But I've never found a franchise, so... I guess I'm lot poorer because of that, but... what astonishes me is that, at my age, I can still find things that interest me. And that's tremendous.

There's the physical life and the voice, but at some point you abandon all of that, you know what the spirit of the person is and you let it descend and just get on with it.