Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over?

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over?

Nowadays people don't know how to handle it if all the ends aren't tied up and they're not told what to think in films. And if they're challenged, they think it's something wrong with the film.

I like working on things that are very different and that involve different disguises.

It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.

Actors aren't stupid, mostly, and if there's a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director's going for, if you're aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

For example, Americans seem reluctant to take on Shakespeare because you don't think you're very good at it - which is rubbish. You're missing out here.

I come more to Scotland than I ever used to, so I feel more connected to it, more part of the zeitgeist. You know when you realize you have a choice and I'm choosing my homeland. It's funny: when you get older these things creep up to you.

I don't feel I'm a compulsive person. I multitask. I'm really well-organised, and I have lots of people to help me.

I had to be a grown-up when I should have been a little boy, and now that I'm a grown-up my little-boyness has exploded out of me. I've lived my life backwards.

I like the tragedies way more than the comedies because they're so universal.

I think you can be as big as you like as long as you mean it. I really do.

I'm Scottish first, and it's odd to hear that I'm a Scottish-American.

It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?

Kids are more genuine. When they come up and want to talk to you, they don't have an agenda. It's more endearing and less piercing to your aura.

Macbeth was the first play I ever read.

My mum always told me I was precious, while my dad always told me I was worthless. I think that's a good grounding for a balanced life.

Once in a while it's good to challenge yourself in a way that's really daunting.

Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety's not my forte.

Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge.

Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He's hardcore to play because he's displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.

Sometimes people get really sniffy about the films you choose if you've done more dramatic projects or you're classically trained.

Sometimes with people I know, they're playing the hunky action guy and there's resistance to them coming out because it's so connected to straight masculinity. There's a plastic kind of movie star who has a very short shelf with very small kind of ambition. I see that but I still don't agree with it.

With 'Urban Secrets,' I just really liked the idea of wandering around chatting to people.

You do get really exhausted doing films. You work such long hours, and after a while, things can get out of perspective, just like if anyone's tired, things get on top of them.

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.

It's actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth,commitment, and openness and mostly you'll be okay.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads and has no patience with mere emotion.

My sole focus is to help bring a World Cup back to the U.S.

Who would name their kid Jack with the last words 'off' at the end of the last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up.

CEOs are worried they're going to get fired any minute. They're worried about their portfolios.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

I get inspired by a lot of different stuff. My father is a huge music fan.

I love a good safari.

I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.

There's no formula.

There is no good and evil there is only power and those too weak to seek it.

You cannot change a person. Let them be. Let them be the way they are.

Not to take anything away from artists who don't write their own songs, but it's always been important to me to make sure it's my story.

It will be good fun finding out what sport baby's good at; perhaps it will be something obscure. My parents were fantastic at taking me to training sessions and letting me try lots of different sports, so I want to do the same.

I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.

Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.

Some of my best experiences are with writer/directors. Guy Ritchie is one. I feel they have a clearer view of what they want to do. They haven't got to try and interpret someone's writing; it's all theirs. I really admire that.

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.

When there is an original sound in the world it makes a hundred echoes.

Every thought is a battle. Every breath is a war and I dont think Im winning anymore.

I actually love diving at night; you see a lot of fish then that you don't see in the daytime.

By the last decades of the 21st century, church worship will still take the form of reading passages of traditional texts - the Bible, the Koran, the Rig Veda - but physicist-priests will preside over the ceremonies.