For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.

Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie.

Maybe it's the music that enables them to function like that, to always take everything as it comes and never complain about the misery, hardship or injustice.

The more opinions you have, the less you see.

Sex and violence was never really my cup of tea; I was always more into sax and violins.

It's very hard to find critics or a magazine today that will publish material that is genuinely independent and written without any concern about being cut off some distributor's list or not be invited or flown into screenings.

I think sometimes you have to just imagine something that looks pretty impossible. By imagining something that is impossible, automatically you wish you could make it possible.