“I think there’s a natural system in your own head about how much violence the scene warrants. It’s not an intellectual process, it’s an instinctive process.”

I’d like to work with the missus, but there’s nothing in the pipeline at the moment.

Previously, on Lock, Stock, I went to bed at two in the morning and woke up at five in the morning, and on this one I was known to nod off on the set occasionally.

I like death. I’m a big fan of it.

I’m not politically motivated. I used to be – passionately. I used to be very Left wing. Then I went very Right wing, and now I rest somewhere in the middle.

I like filming in the UK – I’ll sleep in my own bed, which I’m really happy about.

It’s OK to have beliefs, just don’t believe in them.

Jake Green isn’t just Jake Green. Jake represents all of us. The colour green is the central column of the spectrum and the name Jake has all sorts of numerical values. All things come back to him within the film’s world of cons and games.

I think everything you do, characters I always find, have their own voices and once you establish who that character is you find a different voice. I think it’s just a question of establishing that character and the voice speaks through that character.

The best thing to do is find one person in your life and try to love them unconditionally. If you’ve accomplished that, you’ve accomplished a lot.

If you find a TV series that you like, you like the tone of the TV series or the movie.

I am relatively familiar with getting a good old rumping from the critics. In some cases, the critics just didn’t like the film – fair cop. Others, I think, didn’t understand it.

As I get more and more involved in the child’s world with Rocco his son I’m getting interested in making a film for children.

Sugar is responsible for a lot of deaths. Arguably more than crack cocaine.

Other than the fact that I like a country house, I can’t think of anything I’d want to spend my money on.

If somebody has a better idea than me, I’ll take it if it surpasses what we have on the page because at the end of the day, it’s me that takes the credit anyway!

I got into film-making because I was interested in making entertaining movies, which I felt there was a lack of.

The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by tenderness of the best hearts.

Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.

I know you’re a hazard, but you’re a hazard I forever want in my head.

Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’

Books, the children of the brain.

I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can’t and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody’s head.

Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.