I believe that all great art holds the power to dissolve things: time, distance, difference, injustice, alienation, despair. I believe that all great art holds the power to mend things: join, comfort, inspire hope in fellowship, reconcile us to our selves. Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place.

George [Clooney] and I do have the aim one day to be in a film where we say one nice thing to each other. Hopefully one day.

Years ago, when James Bulger was murdered, every newspaper front page was talking about evil. At that point, having suppressed it for years, I remembered when I was four or five, I tried to kill my own brother.

If we don't accept loneliness, then capitalism wins hands down. Because capitalism is all about trying to convince people that you can distract yourself, that you can make it better. And it ain't true.

What children, in fact all of us at any age, find frightening is unreliability and emotional coldness. The idea that you can't affect someone, that you can't see where they're coming from and can change tact at any moment.

Alexander Trocchi was an existentialist. He was looking at an alienated artist in the post-war period. It's modern because it applies now as well.

I would say, and this sounds like a rather immodest thing to say, but the truth is it's probably the most amazing thing of all, it's pretty much exactly what I thought we were going to make, what I hoped we'd make.