Films for TV have to be much closer to the book mainly because the objective with a TV movie that translates literature is to get the audience after seeing this version to pick up the book and read it themselves. My attitude is that TV can never really be any form of art because it serves audience expectations.

I think it has something to do with being British. We don't take ourselves as seriously as some other countries do. I think a lot of people take themselves far too seriously I find that a very tedious attitude.

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.

The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude towards them.

Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves they run about loose hungering for employment and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations which have all to do with making things already made is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship.

Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

Works of art often last forever or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves especially gallery exhibitions are like flowers they bloom and then they die then exist only as memories or pressed in magazines and books.

While a large segment of the art world has obsessed over a tiny number of stars and their prices an aesthetic shift has been occurring. It's not a movement - movements are more sure of themselves. It's a change of mood or expectation a desire for art to be more than showy effects big numbers and gamesmanship.

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.