There are mysteries, secret zones in each individual.

I have no problem being with people of different nationalities.

Someone knocks at the door of an apartment to borrow salt or sugar, people run into each other in the elevator, and in this way become inscribed in the spectator's memory.

We're always looking at this love through the eyes of the person who is suffering because of this love.

To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work.

The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.

Of course I'd like to get beyond the concrete. But it's really difficult. Very difficult.

Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.

In real life, there are names that surprise us because they don't seem to suit the person at all.

For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you.

There are mysteries, secret zones in each individual.

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking?

Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It's an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.

Documentaries deal with people who live real, everyday lives. But if these people trusted us and told us the truth about their lives, it could be used against them - which sometimes happened.

I believe the life of every person is worthy of scrutiny, containing its own secrets and dramas.

I have one good characteristic: I'm a pessimist, so I always imagine the worst - always. To me, the future is a black hole.

I like chance meetings - life is full of them. Every day, without realising it, I pass people whom I should know.

I really don't know anything about music, and it's no great experience for me. But I do think that music has a purifying element.

I was happy when I got into film school. I'd simply satisfied my ambition to show them that I could get in - nothing else - although I do believe they shouldn't have accepted me. I was a complete idiot. I can't understand why they took me. Probably because I'd tried three times.

If I have a goal, then it is to escape from this literalism. I'll never achieve it; in the same way that I'll never manage to describe what really dwells within my character, although I keep on trying.

In believing too much in rationality our contemporaries have lost something.

The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film.

I am delighted to be back home in Galway, the place I first came to as a 19-year-old in 1960. It's here where my heart is and will forever be.

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

When there wasn't a lot of work, I wrote a screenplay, 'What Lies Beneath,' which got noticed and got me more acting jobs. As I got more jobs, I was able to make my own films. That ethos of making my own work has provided me with a lot of opportunities.

Happiness is an attainable human condition; bliss is reserved for the dead.

It is conventional to call "monster" any blending of dissonant elements. I call "monster" every original inexhaustible beauty.

I have nothing against 3D films but I do not need to see them.

Don't let a bad day make you feel like you have a bad life.

Britain, today, educates 4.8 million primary school children in Britain. And we educate five million primary school children around the developing world, at a cost of 2.5 per cent of what we spend on British children.

People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.

Dreams grow holy put in action.

I'll have to self-publish it because unless you're on the 'New York Times' bestseller lists, anthologies don't sell all that well. However, low sales to a big publisher are a major success to a small one!

A Christian is of no sect. He can dwell in the midst of sects, and appear in their services, without being attached or bound to any. He hath but one knowledge, and that is, Christ in him.

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.

Orrin Hatch was the keynote speaker at the last meeting of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. He sought me out because he was a fan. I was thinking he had confused me with someone else.

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

Real cultural diversity results from the interchange of ideas, products, and influences, not from the insular development of a single national style.

I think it's wrong to compromise your values to fit in with the social climate in Washington, D.C. When it comes to spending, I'm not compromising. I don't care who, what, when or where, I'm not compromising.

Every once in a while I have to pinch myself because Im so lucky to have such a beautiful person in my life.

'The melancholy of all things done' is the way Buzz once described his complete mental breakdown after returning from the moon. Booze. A couple of divorces. A psych ward. Broke. At one point he was selling cars.

Oftentimes, you read these pilot scripts that come through for American work, and they don't sing to you. I've got to be honest, not many of them ignite the flame or give you that burning feeling of, 'Oh, God, I really want to be a part of this.'

I don't think I'd change the path that's got me where I am today.

There's a certain group of people who are always going to dislike me and disagree with whatever I say.

It was the worst period of my life. I had all this gigantic acceptance as a kid, and all of a sudden there was this monumental rejection.