“Period recreation is very difficult unless you make a black and white movie.”

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.

A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is.

I’m always afraid someone’s going to tap me on the shoulder one day and say, ‘Back to North London’.

I am the maker of my own fortune, and Oh! that I could make that of my Red People, and of my country, as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the spirit that rules the universe.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. And if you do have to say it, make it really funny so I can screenshot it and save it for later.

You make history when you do business.

The audience is your first collaborator with the material. If that makes sense.

I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements, with your actions and your voice.

I hate a stupid man who can’t talk to me, and I hate a clever man who talks me down. I don’t like a man who is too lazy to make any effort to shine; but I particularly dislike the man who is always striving for effect.

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn’t the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?