Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.

The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across.

There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.

Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.

The good thing from my perspective is that nobody puts any pressure on me to say what it's going to be. The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.

It creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.

But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you're not snooping into somebody else's lives?

Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.

Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.

I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.

I mean, artistic processes are all about making choices all the time, and the very act of making a choice is the distilling down and the getting to the core of what it is that you care about and what you want to say, really.

I think Michael Caine is a perfectly good actor but it's obvious he's not going to be in one of my films.

I think it's important that nobody forgets that although Hollywood commercially dominates the world cinema, in fact what comes out of the filmmaking here is only a tiny slice out of the massive amount of operation that goes on around the world.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.

I'm old enough to have friends and contemporaries who have long since retired, and that's their prerogative - enough is enough; it doesn't mean a thing to me. But I haven't got any money, so, you know, I just keep on working.

I've long since stopped worrying about how I'm portrayed in the press because ultimately it's not that important. Everyone who knows me knows I do what I do with the greatest integrity.

I've walked out of films. But for every film I've ever walked out of, I've probably walked out of 500 plays.

It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically.

Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it, but you know, you can also make choices. It's about spirit and generosity and all the other things, too.

My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either your relationship works or it doesn't.

My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

There are plenty of bad actors and there are plenty of bad directors. There are actors who will always be bad and there are good actors who you cry for because they're being badly directed or the material isn't good enough.

You will find hardly any improvising on camera anywhere in my films. It's very structured, but it's all worked out from elaborate improvisations over a long period, as you know.

A couple of guys won Academy Awards for the things that I turned down. Today, after coming to terms with everything, after being in therapy for a long time-there are areas where I will compromise.

The 'morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

I've been lucky enough to have had the luxury of being able to make the picture I've wanted to make each time on my own terms and without compromise.

Every day there is a compromise. Living with somebody requires a lot of understanding. But I love being married. I really love it.

Rather, it is through conciliation and compromise that we are building a fair Iraq, a just state for all its peoples.

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy.

Feeling is the consciousness of the resulting conditions - of success, failure, equilibrium, compromise or balance, in this continuous rivalry of ideas.

And what it depends on, of course, is whether the story itself is worth the ethical compromise it requires and whether the competition is onto the story.

We are going to finish this picture just the way I want it... because you cannot compromise an artist's vision.

A lean compromise is better than a fat lawsuit.

The Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything. They have to compromise with liberal Democrats to spend more money. Even though arguably we have control of the Senate, we really don't.

A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.

If you find yourself in a movie that you have questions about, it's not a compromise to your integrity.

Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

The government can still conduct clandestine searches of innocent people's private information such as library, medical, and financial records. This is wrong and should have been addressed in a true compromise.

Don't compromise even if it hurts to be yourself.

No, you're not allowed to be bossy when you're married. You have to learn compromise, and compassion and patience.

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.

The message that President Obama delivered in his speech at Notre Dame was: morality is immoral. Pro-life is the extremist position, not a moral position. Yet we should compromise and work to reduce abortions. Where's the compromise between life and death - and why work to reduce the number of them occurring if there's nothing wrong with them?

The swift wind of compromise is a lot more devastating than the sudden jolt of misfortune.

I'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more.