Conscience, the power of conscience, can unearth all kinds of things.

I don't get attached to anything. I'm like a good antique dealer. I'm prepared to sell my most valuable table.

I don't ever blink, honestly.

I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.

'The Duellists' won Cannes, but Paramount didn't know how to release a film about two guys in bizarre breeches, waving swords around. I actually think it's a pretty good Western.

Egypt was - as it is now - a confluence of cultures, as a result of being a crossroads geographically between Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

Once, I got slaughtered after 'Blade Runner' by Pauline Kael: three pages of slaughter. I was so offended, I would never read any more press.

Sometimes you can do a TV show on a subject you just can't do in film. Either it's too long or studios will perceive it as not being commercial.

If studios don't get their money back, we don't have any movies. So it is important that films are successful, and I am fully supportive of that because I'm not just a director, I'm also not stupid. I've been in this business long enough and, to a certain extent, I'm a businessman; I know the importance of that.

And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.

Some people like to do everything always the same thing. That's another way: To do the same thing.

Try writing a book, dude. That's difficult.

The people who really resurrected 'Blade Runner' was 'MTV.'

I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

When you think about it, 'Avatar' is almost completely an animated movie.

Fire is our first form of technology.

I made the mistake of saying I was an atheist at one point, when I was doing 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

But Gladiator is one of my favourite adventures because I really loved going into the world. I loved creating the world to the degree where you could almost smell it.

Business fascinates me. It's very creative.

Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

I've gradually realised that what I do best is universes. And I shouldn't be afraid of that.

I am in a constant stage of development.

Sometimes I find I'm wearing a divided, split brain in terms of drama and humor.

I've always avoided sequels, unless I felt there was something fresh.

'Alien' is a landmark. One of the really good science-fiction films.

Doing science fiction at a high level is tricky. It's really tricky.

If somebody's given me X amount of dollars to fulfill a dream, they've got every right to actually say something about it.

I'm fundamentally a positive person. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing some of the insane movies that I do.

Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't part of the dynamic of the story.

The digital and theatrical markets are two different marketplaces.

MPC, Moving Picture Company, they're really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.

Any period is fascinating: the more ancient, the better.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

The great film editor is not a cutter, he's a storyteller, right?

Audiences are smarter than ever; they know if filmmakers cheat an environment.

I didn't want to go down the route of spending a year of my life making a movie that would never be seen. I may as well go down a route making a film that a lot of people will see, which is the whole idea behind cinema.

By going to a preview, a director becomes insidiously infected by the process, so by the end of it, you're thinking, 'It may be a bit too long.'

There's a big film industry in Egypt, and quite a big one in Syria, and there's a big Muslim community in Paris.

I had a quite unconventional childhood, in the sense that I traveled a lot and I went to 10 or 11 schools. I was completely confused academically, but wherever I went, I could paint. I painted an inordinate amount.

It's hard writing screenplays.

If you ever have a kid who doesn't know what to do, stick him in art school. It's amazing what evolves.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.

Cast is everything.

I do a pretty good job at casting actually.

If I have to, I'll go and direct theater and talk till the cows come home.

If 'formulaic' is somebody who is unlikely to succeed starting down a process and succeeding - then isn't that what most films are about? And art films are about people who aren't likely to succeed and then don't succeed.

I was one of those kids who tended to stay in on Saturday nights. My mother used to come and say, 'Why don't you go to the dance with the boys?' And I'm going, 'No, I'm perfectly happy.' I think my parents thought I was definitely weird.