I couldn't roam wildly and speak secretly with villagers [in North Korea]. No way you could do that. And honestly, I didn't even try. I was realistic of what I could do and yet persuaded them into accepting numerous things that I shouldn't have filmed.

I have made 70 or so films. In all my films not a single actor, a single extra, was hurt. Not one. So statistics are on my side when I say I'm clinically sane.

If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn't be right at such a moment.

We are not accountants, We are not accountants who do number after number after number of storyboard images, a robot could do it ultimately, but what I'm doing a robot cannot do.

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.

All of a sudden it's twelve-year-olds who are contacting me, fifteen-year-olds, and they have very, very fascinating questions. However, they speak in a language of their age group which I have to learn first.

When you look at the paintings at Chauvet Cave, they're not primitive or like children's little scribbles, it bursts on the scene fully accomplished and when you look through the faces of cultural history, art history, it has never gotten any better.