Most kids don't get to go their parents' wedding.

The press keep asking me, 'What was your biggest mistake?' But if I had made a big mistake, they'd all be writing about it, wouldn't they?

I'm never going to take the view that I should say whatever I need to say in order to achieve something. Because that implies a level of dishonesty.

My only regret is the media's obsession with the past.

I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists.

Jewish voters are not one homogenous block.

I could not cherish London and not value Jewish London. The contribution of Jews to London is immense - politically, economically, culturally, intellectually, philanthropically, artistically.

Working with the Jewish community is essential to me and what I stand for.

Everyone changes all the time.

I swim three times a week.

My political beliefs are my moral, quasi-religious framework.

I do the gardening.

Politics is not a healthy lifestyle.

I grew up in a house with very few books.

Press TV is one of the few TV channels anywhere in the West that fairly presents the Palestinian case.

I never came into life with any favours or privileges.

If you are running a city you must focus on day-to-day problems.

I have opened newspapers and read incredible lies.

I think democracy's undermined when those who own newspapers fill them with trivia rather than real issues.

I would like all newspapers to become workers' co-operatives.

Give me the whole world to run and then I'll be happy. If tomorrow I was told I had to sort out the whole world's problems I'd sleep like a baby.

I have met the people who run the world, and I am not in awe of them.

I have no interest in managing my financial affairs.

My main income is from speaking.

I'm more interested in politicians who deal with human rights in their own country rather than lecture the rest of the world.

Short of being prime minister there isn't a better job in British politics than running London.

The far right was on the march in the 1930s, and we defeated the fascists through a great united working-class effort. That sense of unity and strength is what gave people confidence to change things.

I don't think films about working class people are sad at all; I think they're funny and lively and invigorating and warm and generous and full of good things.

We have to defend the migrant workers and give them our support and demand that they have the rights that workers here have from day one, but absolutely hate the system that forces people to leave their country, leave their homes, leave their families, to go somewhere else to be exploited.

A journalist uses the most precise words he or she can. An artist does the same sort of thing. You gather material about a particular subject, you refine it as best you can.

I challenge the idea that films about rich people are escapism and films about working class people are dour and sad. I find the opposite's the case.

If you're a politician, you can see there might be times when, to secure the greater good, you have to take a backwards step. That is a matter of tactics.

Most cities are eclectic. There's a bit of medieval, Georgian, some Victorian and some 20th century. That's fine. Bath is different because it was built within 100 years or less. It has a homogeneity.

Bath was dusty and a little shabby when we moved here. It did look its age and you felt its history in its streets and buildings and little alleyways. The sense of the past was palpable. There were some bad modern buildings but there was a patina of age.

There has been no more principled opposition to racism than Jeremy Corbyn: he was getting arrested for protesting against Apartheid when the rest of them were doing deals and calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

If change is to come, it must come from the working class. That's why telling their story is important. That's why knowing our history is important.

The problem is, if you make a film that has certain implications in the story, and then you don't follow through, it's a cop out really, isn't it?

In general I think that in art you only have the responsibility to tell the truth.

A film has got to demand to be made. Otherwise - if it's just, 'Shall we? Why not?' - you shouldn't make it.

The most enjoyable things are the old eighteenth-century terraces that are still standing, that domestic architecture.

I think that's one of the things that sport teaches you. You are only as good as the team around you.

The European Union is an institution that is in the interest of big business, not the European people. So it's understandable that some people thought we should leave.

I think people think of auteurs as being a dictator shouting over everyone about his vision. That's not the way I think of auteurs or the way I work.

Well, I think by and large, certainly in terms of cinema, American culture dominates our cinema, mainly in the films that are shown in the multiplexes but also in the way that it has a magnetic effect on British films.

I think it's time British filmmakers stopped allowing themselves to be colonized so ruthlessly by U.S. ideas and stopped looking so slavishly to the U.S. market. It demeans filmmaking when they do that.

Jimmy's Hall' is set in Ireland in the '30s and everything that went under the camera we had to generate.

Jeremy Corbyn's election was the most hopeful thing since the Labour Party began. He's the first Labour leader who's ever stood on the picket line along with workers.

Cannes is the largest festival of world cinema.

I know there are people who can direct sitting down away from it all at a video monitor. But I can't do that.

It's more interesting to see new people on the screen when you go to the cinema. I don't want to see the same old faces.