“Ive never actually watched another director work.”

It doesn’t matter what the technology is – no one will watch a Peter Greenaway film anyway.

Well, if you ask any filmmaker how they got into it, everyone came a different route.

So fine that the Irish don’t even acknowledge that it exists.

If you’d been where I’d been… if you’d seen the things I’d seen!… you… you’d be me… Or someone following me around.

Have a go. Anybody can do it.

I was once described by one of my critics as an aesthetic fascist.

I’m a pluralist. I’ve always argued that as many different films as possible should be made.

Rain is also very difficult to film, particularly in Ireland because it’s quite fine.

A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads.

The films that I do tend to polarise people’s views.

I’ve always been completely autocratic. I’ve never learned to be diplomatic or democratic.

Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.

Most directors have little lists in their heads of people they really want to work with.

Film-making is a physically hard job.

I always argued against the auteur theory; films are a collaborative art form.

I turn on the TV sometimes, start watching something and think.

Actually, I have a lot of hobbies, but I’ve kept up with model-building the longest. In particular, I love military models.

I have spent six years in prison, the last six years. Even if I was outside the prison, how much actual space was there for an investigative journalist to do his work in Iran?

You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.

Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.

“Trust me, you don’t want to have to actually interact with these people.”

By getting into distribution and production, I am actually widening my base.

The most important thing a woman can do for another is to illuminate her actual possibilities.

The history of making war with biological weapons begins in mythology, in ancient oral traditions that preserved records of actual events and ideas of the era before the invention of written histories.