Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I prefer fact to fiction.
I'm a passionate trade unionist.
I want to be remembered as a storyteller.
I can't write, I can't paint, I don't compose.
I'm 4 ft. 2 in. and not exactly a matinee idol.
Irreverence is an essential part of our culture.
When I'm directing a movie, nothing else matters.
I was on my own union council for twenty-odd years.
I think 'E.T.' is a quite extraordinary piece of cinema.
I adored my mother. I absolutely adored her and admired her.
I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.
There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.
In the late 1940s, there weren't any pop stars, and TV didn't exist.
Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone.
The problem is, you see, I've just got so many subjects I want to direct.
I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.
I have no great interest in being remembered as a great creative filmmaker.
I don't blame people for their mistakes, but I do ask that they pay for them.
I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.
I always wanted to make films that might change or at least focus people's views.
The old adage about acting - that it's 98% energy and 2% talent - is true, you know.
I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject.
I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.
My family were liberal with a small 'l' but passionately doers. I wanted to be a doer.
What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.
On my last day of shooting, I'd be happy to say 'Cut, it's a wrap' and fall off the twig.
I never want to make the kind of film whose impact ends when the audience leaves the cinema.
I believe we need heroes...we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.
I like to make films about people who changed the lives of others and asserted human dignity.
Pier Angeli was in the movie called Sea of Sand that Guy Green directed where this idea came up.
If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.
You act in a movie, and at the end of the day, the director and editor decide what your performance is.
I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.
And I believe we need heroes, I believe we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.
If someone says they're going to ring me at 10 o'clock and it's 10 past and they haven't rung, I'm irritated.
When me and Sheila got married, all we had was an oval table, four chairs, a bed, and a painting by Matthew Smith.
'E.T.' depended absolutely on the concept of cinema, and I think that Steven Spielberg, who I'm very fond of, is a genius.
I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero.
I'm not a great director or an auteur; I'm an ensemble director. I do think I can get wonderful performances out of actors.
I lived in an atmosphere where Mama brought 60 Basque refugee children to England during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
The family is the focal point of our existence. And up until Jane and Lucy's death, there were always 16 of us together for Christmas.
I don't really like the Oscars; it's a commercial promotional event. It helps immeasurably to sell films, but it's hardly the Nobel prize.
I know I'm regarded as an establishment figure, but I was crucified by the establishment for 'Oh! What a Lovely War', 'Gandhi' and 'Cry Freedom.'
And that is how I employ my time in cinema, saying things about people who I think have touched us in terms of our value judgement and by example.
If you are playing in 'Charley's Aunt,' and your favourite aunt died that lunchtime, you'll still have to go on the stage and play 'Charley's Aunt.'
I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.
In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie.
I'm simply saying that heroes are people whose activities, whose attitudes, and whose judgment you just think, 'Wow. That's good. That's right. That's real.'
Say what you will about 'Miracle on 34th Street'; I can take my grandchildren to it. If I had a maiden aunt, I could take her, or my ma and pa if they were alive.
I'm not a pyrotechnical director; I'm not good with all those innovative things. What I am interested in is how actors can touch the heads and hearts of an audience.