There's nothing I'm particularly keen to hide about my humanity.

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!

I have this very strange relationship with my work, which is that it's like a conversation between me and it.

It was just me, naked as underneath my clothes right now, as all of you are.

I think there's a dishonorable tradition in Hollywood to give the idea, particularly to children, that evil characters are dark.

I live a soldier's life when I'm working. That's how it feels to me, except I've got a slightly greater chance of survival.

It's wonderful to actually have an opportunity to get real and show how complicated and fascinating sex is.

In my house, a hot dog is a dog that's really hot.

Even beyond sexuality, I'm generally interested in identity.

Sexuality is, of course, a great way of having a conversation between people.

I'm interested in that whole question of where we wear our identity and how can we see it.