All religions have always hated females.

Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else.

As for critics, one mediocre writer is more valuable than ten good critics. They are like haughty, barren spinsters lodged in a maternity ward.

Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward.

English culture is highly literary-based.

For so many filmmakers, cinema is a means to an end.

I admit that death is not just about you, it's also about the people who love you.

I can't think of anyone who has done anything remotely useful after the age of 80.

I don't believe in the deplorable notion of realism in the cinema: you can over-reach it, and it becomes as false as convention.

I don't want to be a film-maker. I think painting is far more exciting and profound.

I obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them.

I've always been fascinated by Eisenstein.

If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.

The Sistine Chapel is an extraordinary work of education - it lays out all the early books of the Bible.

We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse.

I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium.

I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory.

I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?'

I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy.

I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it.