The problem for me is that I look like so many people in my family, so I can't really see anything. Except I could say that I look rather like my father without his mustache.

Even if I have only ten more years in front of me, it's such an intensive life. I have the feeling that I have already lived three lives in three years.

I understand that we cannot make other people happy when they are unhappy.

I've never sent a Tweet. I think I have an account but I don't know who runs it. I've never done one in my life.

I believe in God, but I am not sure to trust Him so much.

I don't want to think my life as a career. I'm interested in my work only because of the meaning I can make.

What we wear is the shell of who we are.

I never want to do the same things twice. I like surprises.

I understand that nobody understands me, but I can't be someone I'm not.

Charm is more valuable than beauty. You can resist beauty, but you can't resist charm.

Maybe it was my revenge on people who had been unkind to me as a child. But it was very easy and a thrill to freeze up children.

Archetypes are always [in my film-making]. It's sometimes interesting to just flip them a little bit and see the underside.

When I'm in northern Italy, I walk about feeling slightly less of a freak.

For me, sex is a refraction of the thing about identity. In the sexual contact, which is usually - but not exclusively - between two people, you do retain separate people.

We're like the raw food movement in cinema - so determined to give people things that do some good, that they recognize as real.

I think that a real film fan experience is about a kind of omnivorous experience.

There's an alarm bell that goes off in my head if I can sense that I'm making a mistake.

We must hang on to the idea that we can actually change things. That's the sort of environment that Joe finds himself in, in Young Adam.

I have no problems with the NC-17 rating. I want more NC-17 films. More adult cinema!