English Quotes

I've never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I've been to Los Angeles on my hands. I've never made a movie there and I've never been there for working reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.

I'm not really a director for hire. You read these scripts and go, 'This is a really great script, but Paul Greengrass would make this so much better than me.' I usually say, 'I know who would be good for this. It's not me.'

I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.

I would love to do something for TV... I wanna do 'Kavalier & Clay' on HBO as an eight-parter. It'll be so much better as a series, honestly.

I think it's absolutely fascinating that in Berlin the parliament can discuss actively the role of their soldiers in Afghanistan because is it still possible, literally, for a German soldier to take up arms.

I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.

I never want to make a film. I don't wake up in the morning going, 'Ooh, I'd really love to be on set making a film today'. I'm aware that other contemporary film directors perceive film-making as what they do, as what they have to do. But I would hope that I am more catholic in my tastes.

I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful.

I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored.

I have never been motivated by money in my life. You can't make choices based on what the financial return might be.

I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.

I am, in fact, Superman. Every morning I wake up and go into a telephone booth and change my costume, and then go to work.

I always say, 'I really need to take a break.' It's three days in and I'm getting pretty bored.

Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.

England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.

At school, I decided I wanted to be a director and then I went out and spent the rest of my adult life trying to be a director. It was really clear to me. So in that sense I was very lucky.

As soon as I know how to do something, I usually get bored with it.

Actually, to be honest, this is a useful time to not be knowing what I'll be doing in 2013 or 2014, because really, for the last however many years, I've known what I've been doing for years and years ahead. You get into a cycle of non-reflection, and that gets a bit scary.

Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.

There is no such thing as a fixed policy, because policy like all organic entities is always in the making.

The world looks at preachers out of church to know what they mean in it.

The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: They acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced His will in all things.

The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.

Self-will so ardent and active that it will break a world to pieces to make a stool to sit on.

God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.

If I have made an appointment with you, I owe you punctuality, I have no right to throw away your time, if I do my own.

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.

To see and be acquainted with strangers, in especial with men in honour and authority.

Not that I am ashamed of my mind or body, my birth or breeding, my actions or fortunes, for my bashfulness is in my nature, not for any crime.

Not because they were servants were we so reserved, for many noble persons are forced to serve through necessity, but by reason the vulgar sort of servants are as ill bred as meanly born, giving children ill examples and worse counsel.