"My father and I had a good relationship, it was very relaxed. He had a lot of humour. He looked a little bit like me, although he had no beard. He had the appearance of a very elegant British-looking man."

"And if there was one title that could be applied to all my films, it would be 'Civil War' - not civil war in the way we know it, but the daily war that goes on between us all."

"To me, it's far more efficient to mobilize the imagination. It's far more efficient to hear a creaking step, for example, than to see the face of a monster, which usually looks ridiculous, and where you know that the blood is ketchup."

"Of course, we avoid death. To know something is inevitable is one thing. To accept, to truly feel it... that's different."

"It proved to me, though, that comedy is so much harder."

"I just couldn't go back to Suddenly Susan after David Strickland's suicide. I didn't see how we could make the show light and funny any more."

"It's a real primal thing, watching someone get hurt. It's funny and accessible."

"Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet."