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" In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of. "

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" The working-class aspirations are worse now than when I was a kid - and it was pretty bad when I was a kid. Reality TV means they are being told they are no longer a working class, they're an underclass. Young lassies want to be Jordan or Jade, but very few aspire to be the next Germaine Greer. "

" Life is much weirder than fiction; nothing's more absurd. "

" When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy. "

" I was on the set of 'Braveheart' and my mate says to me, 'Do you think this film will be any good?' And I really meant this, too, I told him 'Let me put it this way - It won't win any awards.' Cut to: five Oscars. "

" It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby. "

" In the acting game, you spend a long time fighting against what the director perceives you to be. And half the time the directors don't know. "

" There's no such thing as an actor giving positive criticism to a director. The minute you say 'Don't you think it would look nicer...', that director's going to hate your guts. Particularly if it's a good idea. "

" Every film I've ever worked on, and that includes 'Braveheart' and 'Trainspotting,' I've always witnessed a director having a breakdown. Every director will have a day, without exception, where they just can't do it anymore, they don't know what to say to their cameraman, their cast. It's the sign of real, physical exhaustion. "

" The films that I really enjoy now are films that are made by, for wont of a better word, mavericks. "

" There's a part of bohemia I love. The lack of prejudice, the lack of aggression, I love the lack, for the most part, of competitiveness. It's more peaceful. "

" The Vatican has tried to condemn 'The Magdalene Sisters' as a pack of lies and that I've made it all up - I wish I was that good a dramatist - and in terms of public relations, that was the daftest thing they ever did. "

" Truth is I don't think God on a daily basis. I think politics, science. "

" If I'm at home on my own and the writing isn't going well, I clean my house. And there have been times in the past few years when my house has looked really clean. "

" I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to. "

" I'm not a career filmmaker. I just like to do things that I still kind of believe in and because of that you just never know what's going to happen next. It doesn't matter if it's been a good year or a bad year: next year, there's no telling what it will be like. "

" The Vatican is like a huge kind of magician's club. The more you look into it the more awful it becomes. And they're laughing at us. That's when I get angry. "

" In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore. "

" A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being. "

" In Scotland, we're a colony in more ways than one. So when directors come up to work, there's a very particular way they want Scotland to look like and to behave like. "

" Part of the reason why movie bosses are so obsessed with crime movies is because they know that world and the criminals. And that's what they are - they would not hesitate to act illegally to achieve profit and gain. "

" Most actors I know come from a screwed up background, so it makes sense that if you can walk on to a space and recreate your reality, then that's the place that will become very dear. "

" There are some people who walk into a room and they oxygenate it, by their very being there's fresh air. Then there are those who come in with the smell of death and they suck the life out. "

" You have to just go with your imagination, where your instinct takes you. "

" I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them. "

" I find the world more absurd now than I did when I was a kid. "

" I love acting. It's the one job I know of where you can go in, go through complete catharsis - emotionally, physically sometimes and mentally - and at the end of the day say, 'See you in the pub, guys.' "

" I did 'Deathly Hallows' so my kids could get on the 'Harry Potter' set. They met Daniel Radcliffe, who was a darling and couldn't have been nicer to them so I'm a hero right now. "

" Just in relation to women, it's not that huge an imaginative leap to see the connection between the Taliban and the Catholic Church. "

" I guess I'm part of the art house, but we really have to shake up our ideas, because we're kind of self-parodying ourselves. We go places commercial cinema doesn't go, but sometimes it's to our own detriment. "

" As a dad I'm emotionally dedicated but I'm not 'figuring out their life plans'. But of course as I'm telling them about the rights of wrongs I'm thinking back to what I was like at their age. "