When I was in film school, it was said that all good films were characterised by some form of humour.

Far be it from me to force anyone into either chess or dressage, but if you choose to do so yourself, in my opinion there is only one way: follow the rules.

I had an almost fetishistic attraction to film technology.

I sit there pouring out my woes year after year, coming up with one enormity after another about my mother and the way she let me down; but it doesn't make me any the less fearful.

I always do something that I've never done before.

You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance.

I'm happy that I'm alive. I feel like someone coming back from Vietnam, you know; I'm sure that later on I'll start killing people in a square somewhere, but right now, I just feel happy to be alive.

If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.

Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can't beat them, and if you can't beat them, join them, as they say. As I've got older I've become very interested in that part of the work.

I grew up in a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden.

That's the great thing about entering a convent: There are things that you simply can't do, so you don't have to worry about them.

If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.

I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.

When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music.

It's always been a lie that it's difficult to make films.

I'm having a vacation, and it's so beautiful, and maybe I'll never get another film idea in my life.

Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.

When I was in film school, it was said that all good films were characterised by some form of humour.

More than anything, there are more images in evil. Evil is based far more on the visual, whereas good has no good images at all.

Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.

I am not very tough with raising my children, but you can argue that to be more tough will help your children.

I know that I cannot be with a person for three hours without saying at least ten things that would kill me.

I would say that I am a poor Christian; I'm not a believer. It was this idea very early in my life that life on Earth, nature or man could not be a creation of a merciful God.

If you want to provoke, you should provoke someone who is stronger than you, otherwise you are misusing your power.

My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it's a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it's a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.

Political correctness kills discussion.

When I show a film at a festival, I am showing myself. Everything is at stake for me.

You know, I really do have some morals. I do actually care about people. And I do have a political standpoint.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.