“He is still my favourite author, and he is the one – I still think – who writes most honestly about human existence.”

If I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take ‘myself,’ subtract ‘movies,’ and the result is ‘zero.’

I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with.

When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film.

My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something.

I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.

To be an artist means to search, to find and look at these realities. To be an artist means to never look away.

A truly good movie is enjoyable too. There’s nothing complicated about it.

To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.

It’s easy to explain the psychological state of a character at a particular moment, but it’s very difficult to describe it through the delicate nuances of action and dialogue. Yet it is not impossible.

While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else.

They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film.

That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this.

For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water.

The role of the artist is to not look away.

The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.

The thing I’d really like to see is the old London Bridge, with all the old buildings around it like Shakespeare’s Globe.

Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books.

I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare.

You’ll see Dame Judi Dench in a Bond film, in Shakespeare and then starring in her own sitcom. You never see that here with Meryl Streep.

I’m not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there’s going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what’s going to happen.

The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and an undisguised repugnance for the mumbo-jumbo that’s the curse of so much commentary on anything to do with economics or investment.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?