We've got so many stories to tell, you know, we could take on the world.

We cheer everyone who goes off to Hollywood and tells American stories but telling Australian stories is the greatest thing you can do.

There are a thousand weird untold stories in the Australian film industry, this has been one of them.

Can you imagine what it would be like if all the Aussie film talent was able to make Australian stories?

The obsession required to see a feature through from concept to release is not a rational thing to do with your brief time on this planet. Nor is it something to which an intelligent person should aspire.

So we have to be careful because if you don't protect your culture you won't have it for very long.

Australians don't have a preconceived notion of what things have to be... we can go on a fantastic journey.

My background was art school, documentary director and surfer with a keen interest in thrilling acts of life threatening stupidity.

I kind of worry about that a little bit - we lost our film culture for 30 years because the Americans came in and bought up all the cinema chains and wouldn't show any Australian films.

Three years after starting, by physically doing everything from raising the finance to special effects, we'd finally cobbled together our low budget film.

You go overseas and people are oppressed and scared and worried but we're not like that... we're more like my films and how people come out at the end of seeing them - they feel good.

While the eyes of the world will be on us let's show everyone that we have a great sense of humour.

It was always easy for me. I was born very rich and lucky.

Find your own specific voice in filmmaking and go for it. Either people will get it or they won't and that's what it's all about.

It's because we are so flooded with American culture that we're startled when we see ourselves up there on the screen.

Hollywood is horrible... it's beyond satire.

We've got so many stories to tell, you know, we could take on the world.

Movies are usually difficult, often insane, constantly challenging and always strangely amusing to make.

It's an infinite creative universe to explore so why chase conservative options?

All the jokes in my films, the comedy, they're not me, I just try to hold a big mirror up to us.

I just wanted to do this all Australian film and we didn't want to give creative control to overseas 'cause whoever comes on my sets, whether you're sweeping the floor or an actor, it doesn't matter who comes up with the ideas, it's a collaboration.

I support all Australian films.

Now both my films have been number one at the Australian box office and it took about two years just to get the finance for this film, so if it's hard for me then God help everyone else.

In a kind of a way there's a bit of that happening now so we have to be careful to preserve our culture.

I don't know what it means to be out there against the Olympics.

In 1905 Albert discovered Relativity, in 1906 he invented Rock and Roll.

Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts.

Then if your movie clicks with real audiences, you'll be sucked into some sort of Hollywood orbit. It's a devil of a place where the only religion that really counts is box office.

Making your first feature film is actually impossible.

We live in a time where government is not a leadership thing, it's more a business that's out there and running riot, so I guess the people have to go out there and say stuff.

The journey of your first movie is not just beyond belief it can be truly beyond satire.

Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.

If government and media and all of us in the Australian tribe got together, and the rock industry, we'd just be the greatest cultural force the world has ever seen - we're such an amazing race.

The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula.

Johnny Winter is one of the best blues players in the world. He's very underrated.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

Well concerning the world records that I did, I think it helps a lot to me, yeah. I think it's a very individual thing because I heard some people say, like, oh I don't like it at all. But I definitely, for me it really made a big difference.

Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.

I do believe there are leaders who are like lightning and they come along and they lead. The Lincolns of the world, the Alexander the Greats, they do exist. They have existed.

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.

Scientific corporations might well become almost independent states and be enabled to undertake their largest experiments without consulting the outside world - a world which would be less and less able to judge what the experiments were about.

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.

The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.

The world has fundamentally changed. It fundamentally changed when the Berlin Wall came down and the 'evil empire' ceased to exist. We are engaged around the world whether we like it or not.

I think having eight kids evens things out a bit. You learn about the world; you learn about the world; you learn you've got to get along. We're all - if anything - very adjustable.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.