“I always have a point of view. It may not be right, but it’s my own.”

There’s a whole system in Hollywood where the director never speaks to the studio, but I like to engage them in a discussion. I listen.

In terms of the mechanics of story, myth is an intriguing one because we didn’t make myth up; myth is an imprinture of the human condition.

I wouldn’t take a directing job if I didn’t think it was enriching life.

I really believe musical form will go on. There’s got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.

So, what is creative freedom? We can make what we want, how we want. The only constraint is: not for any budget.

When you’re in theater or the circus or film – to me it’s all one – affairs happen. People fall in love.

One of the great things about Sydney is that it has a great acceptance of everyone and everything. It’s an incredibly tolerant city, a city with a huge multicultural basis.

I’ve always loved the old epics that tell a simple emotional story, whether it’s the tumultuous relationship between Rhett and Scarlett or Lawrence of Arabia’s passion to get lost in a faraway place.

I am always worried when someone says, ‘This is perfect.’

Advice is a form of nostalgia.

I never see things I make in the same way that the audience does. You can never do that.

I mean the future has become old fashioned.

The party is a true art form in Sydney and people practise it a great deal. You can really get quite lost in it.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.

Western films don’t do very well in India.

In the ’60s not everybody was wearing flowers in their hair and flowing caftans.

Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

If Donald Trump is our nominee, it could be the end of the Republican Party. It will split us and splinter us in a way that we may never be able to recover. And the Democrats will be joyful about it. It’s not going to happen.

Why is it that when men and women congregate, though the men may beat the women in numbers by ten to one, and through they certainly speak the louder.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber.

May I not seem to have lived in vain.

I am a vegetable man anyway. And I also get a lot of rest. That’s the key I may be up early, but I’m in bed early too.

The soul is not the body and it may be in one body or in another, and pass from body to body.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.