The best set was probably 'Bloody Sunday.' We had no money for extras and gambled on months of outreach to persuade the people of Derry to turn out and march for us on one single afternoon. And they did. In their tens of thousands. Seeing them march, their patience and their dignity and their commitment, I knew the movie would have a quality of truth.

My working life is me doing what I want to do. This is that. I've made movies that people don't go to see.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

There are people who are originals and the stuff they make really is new. It isn't based on anything else. But I've decided I'm not that-I was never that. My abilities are to synthesize a wide range of references and ideas into something that feels relatively unified and coherent.

Truth and facts have to trump partisanship. There has to be something that's true regardless of what your angle is on it.

Nobody's talking about movies the way they're talking about their favorite TV shows.

Anytime you've got something that can take you into the political realm then you've opened up the conversation a lot.