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

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.

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

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

This seems quite good, a bit familiar.’ Then I realise … It’s one of my movies. It’s a pretty odd feeling.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions.

Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director’s task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over.

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think you’ve gotten some approval for them.

The poetic way of looking at it is which project is going to choose me as a director.

I don’t come to work as an actor. There are many directors who can direct without ever having acted and do a great job and connect with their actors and lead them to excellent performances without themselves having had an acting background.

In my experience as a director, I think there is obviously something of the way men – maybe that’s a common point with Shirin – the way men see women in the film, and the way these two characters see each other.

I didn’t just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.

People have curiosity, they have intelligence, they have interest in understanding their peers. But producers and directors of cinema have decided that the seats in the theaters have been made to transform people’s minds to lazy minds.