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

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

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.

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

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.

Fragrance is a bit of a selfish gift because it’s comforting when you’re near someone and you recognize their smell.

The tragedy of human history is decreasing happiness in the midst of increasing comforts.

We all know the sense of comfort of which we are conscious when a good half of the floor space in a room is unencumbered; this seems to offer us the agreeable possibility of moving about freely.

As a Christian, you forgive, and you feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and you visit the sick and comfort the lonely.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.

Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures.

Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones and then manage the resulting distress.