“At the moment, my mother is the only one left in Glasgow, although it’s certainly my home.”

It’s easier for me to get three times the amount of money I really want.

It means that if they misunderstood Comfort and Joy, they misunderstood my other films.

I didn’t think Comfort and Joy was going to be a box-office smash.

Perhaps naively I thought people understand what humor was, that it was invented by the human race to cope with the dark areas of life, problems and terrors.

I’m not fond of any of my films in an intimate way, but Gregory’s Girl would be number 4 on my list.

I’d made these experimental films but I thought the major chore of a filmmaker was to relate to actors.

The movie business is very much like that: people in authority making purely emotional decisions instead of interesting rational ones.

I went to the Glasgow Youth Theatre and they just let me in. But I was so shy that I was there for about six weeks without actually introducing myself.

My two elder sisters married Englishmen and went abroad.

The studio system reminds me of the stock market.

I was really scared to stay home alone when I was kid, and I would freak out whenever there was a noise after my parents left.

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.

I’m just saying the producers and people who work on music are getting left out – that’s when it starts getting criminal. It’s like you’re working hard, and you’re not receiving. In any other business, people would be standing before Congress. They have antitrust laws against this kind of behavior.

The enemy is in front of us, the enemy is behind us, the enemy is to the right and to the left of us. They can’t get away this time!

About the joys and the courage, I really don’t know what other people think. I just know that I’ve never left Africa. I’ve lived there all my life. And one of the wonderful things, in spite of all the terrible things that happen in South Africa, is the way people continue to keep their dignity.

Climbing the economic ladder has been very hard for me; I still feel a great deal of guilt towards those I left behind.

Few names have left a firmer imprint upon the pages of the history of American times than has that of Ty Cobb… he seems to have understood that in the competition of baseball, just as in war, defensive strategy never has produced ultimate victory.

I watch her blond head until it disappears around the bend, and I feel bare, like there’s nothing left to protect me against pain. Her absence stings worst of all.