I can’t re-examine work I did in the past with pride.
I don’t torture myself.
I didn’t like the idea of being foolish, but I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and be foolish.
Being at the centre of a film is a burden one takes on with innocence the first time. Thereafter, you take it on with trepidation.
When I was younger, I made some decisions that I shouldn’t have. And, in hindsight, I’ve almost always been wrong when I haven’t listened to myself.
How people are around a director, it really does affect everything, every detail of the life of the movie.
It is awesome to feel you are carrying on the family name.
I had a very vivid, almost hallucinatory moment in which I was engaged in a dialogue with my father.
I depleted myself to the point where I had nothing left.
Ireland was a place for the renewal of hope and I still see it like that.
Shoes are strange things. If you take your shoes off in a situation in which you’re vulnerable, you’ll feel 10 times more vulnerable.
I just knew at an early time in my life how important privacy was.
A lot of guys in jail tattoo their hands.
Perhaps I’m particularly serious, because I’m not unaware of the potential absurdity of what I’m doing.
At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.
Germans don’t speak in a German accent, they just speak German.
How can you be a recluse in a house full of children, even if you had the inclination to be, which I don’t?
I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it’s no problem for me to believe that I’m somebody else.
Films exhaust me, they do, and I often want nothing more to do with them, but I’m continually surprised at the resurgence of the impulse to come back and do it all over again.
When I’ve gone back to work, it’s always with that sense of inevitability. That may be a complete delusion, but it’s the one that I need to get out of bed and go about my business. That sense that I can’t avoid this thing. I better just get on with it.