“I looked at Brief Encounter very closely, to be honest.”

Always, with any movie that I do, I have a book of ideas that I’ve heard, or seen, or whatever, and I always try to incorporate it in the film.

Well, I think just the fact that you are making your first film is a huge step.

You have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can’t do.

I’ve always been interested in films where you can identify with the actors.

I was watching Monster’s Ball, which is a fabulous movie. It’s just a little gem: beautifully shot, and shot in a way I never would have done.

Their every instinct – and I have to say this is without exception – is to iron out the bumps, and It’s always the bumps that are the most interesting stuff.

Foxes was a movie that didn’t do a lot of business but it didn’t do too badly critically and eventually they offered me other things.

I think that there are points where you become so close to an actor,

The interesting thing was that next I tried a film called Star Man, which Michael Douglas was producing.

Somebody said that I’m a bit like a sponge, grabbing things here and there, soaking stuff up. [As a director] you have to be, really.

The danger is that if you have a bunch of ideas that you forget to use.

If you are prepared to make a fool of yourself for them then you usually get that back.

Obviously, in dealing with a relationship, sexuality has to be involved, and jealousy and emotions like that. And I don’t know, I’ve always been intrigued by those emotions.

I think you get better at staring into space.

And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches.

I wanted to make a movie about the arbitrary nature of love.

Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.

Having lost the last war, they are currently enjoying a “Wirtschaftswunder,” which can be briefly translated as “The best way to own a Mercedes is to build one.”

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.

Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.

However brief and close to the earth his words sound, they echo throughout infinite eternity and permeate the faith of his followers with their eternal content.

It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.

You just need people with the desire to better themselves.