I love Humphrey Jennings. People ask me who my favorite documentary maker is, and he's certainly in the top three.

I love submarine movies.

When I was growing up on Loch Lomondside, one of the first albums I ever bought was Marley's 'Uprising.' I guess that would have been 1980 - just before he died.

There were many times during the filming of 'Touching the Void' when I wondered why I had ever thought I wanted to make this film.

You can relate to someone with a flaw.

You can go to places in Africa and Asia and find Marley graffiti. In the slums of Nairobi, you see his lyrics painted on walls, and you realise he has this almost religious significance to the underclass of the world. He's a guy born in a hut with no bed, and now he's probably the most listened-to artist in the world. It's fascinating.

I suppose making documentaries is like doing journalism on film.

With 'Black Sea,' I long had an idea that I wanted to do a film about people stuck on the bottom of the ocean. I thought that was a terrifying scenario.

I used the same designer and costume designer on 'The Eagle' and 'The Last King of Scotland.'

I think the parallels of a giant power with overwhelming military superiority and might, with America and Rome, it seems obvious to me.

'State of Play' is a romantic story at its heart.

For me, the aim of making any film like this, any film about an artist, would be to send you back to the art.

The Internet has meant that advertising has migrated; there are hardly any classifieds in newspapers any more because they're all online. If people have a car to sell, for example, they sell it online; they don't go to the newspaper.

We're all fascinated by the way other people live their lives, how they cope with hardship and triumph, what they put in their home movies and family albums.

The first documentary I saw that tried to show the actual experience of being a soldier in combat was 'The Anderson Platoon,' by French director Pierre Schoendoerffer, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 1967.

Although 'The Anderson Platoon' was what we would now call an 'embedded film' - with all the ambiguities that term implies - somehow Schoendoerffer got away with showing things as they really were from a grunt's perspective.

Despite the limitations of the bulky 16mm camera and 10-minute film magazines, 'The Anderson Platoon' feels as spontaneous and fresh as any films that have come out of the Afghan or Iraq wars.

In war films, even more than in other kinds of documentary, we've come to think that shaky, poor-quality footage is somehow more authentic than something classically 'well shot.'

In film, I believe things should either be documentary or drama.

If there is a tendency in modern television I hate, it is the unstoppable march of the dramatic reconstruction to tell the stories of anything from an ancient Egyptian battle to the early life of Paul Gascoigne.

The great thing about making a film on a submarine is that it's kind of like making a play. You've got this limited environment.

Everyone's got to make one submarine drama in their life.

I find it really difficult when you make a movie where it is set in Russia and everyone speaks in English. It drives me crazy.

It feels like we're all so familiar now with the traditional three-act structure that, actually, stories that are more complex, more naughty, that allow for disagreement and discussion, are more interesting to us.

People who die in an untimely way who are artists, somehow that validates their art, we feel. Why culturally we feel that, I don't know.

What got me into making movies was that I wanted to be a journalist.

A publisher friend of mine suggested that I write a book about my grandfather, who had just died. I had nothing else to fill my empty days with, so I started work on this book. While researching it - watching lots of movies, talking to moviemakers - I became interested in movies and started making documentaries.

The interesting thing to me is that somehow the future of movies will become a more social thing... I think that people will see them communally and will be talking about them as they're watching them, in a way, and immediately after watching them, and they'll all become the conversation. I think that's pretty interesting.

Sometimes people give away more by not saying something.

If you can understand, you can feel compassion.

In my early career as a documentarian, I suppose I was trying to make films which - where it was all about making a big cinematic statement, and I think with 'Marley,' I slightly changed my direction and adopted a more mellow approach.

I'm not doing any more music films!

If you want to do 'Sword & Sandals' movies, people think that means it equals 'epic.'

I was a teenager in the '80s, and I was always a bit dismissive of Houston, as I think a lot of people who considered themselves 'cool music fans' were. She was poppy, bubble gum, making music not considered very cool. But you can't help but dance to some of those songs or feel emotionally affected by 'I Will Always Love You.'

Most people in Uganda have something good to say about Amin - 'He was funny; he gave us pride to be African.'

Coming from documentaries, my biggest challenge was to understand actors' psychologies. American actors take it all very seriously; British actors don't enter into all this methody way of doing things.

You can get good performances in quite sizable roles from people who have never been in front of a camera, people who maybe have never been in front of a movie theater.

In some ways, making documentaries is like being a journalist. You interview people and then use the bits you want to use as opposed to the bits they want you to use.

The relationship between director and subject can become very intense. It's a bit like therapy, with lots of transferences going on. It's easy to feel guilty.

It's obviously presumptuous in some ways to talk about somebody's sexuality who's not here to describe themselves.

When you're trying to make a film, you're trying to find a way to love your subject, and you want your audience to love your subject.

As a filmmaker, I'm interminably curious and nosy, but certain times you meet people and think, 'I don't want to push you too hard because I can see this is painful for you.'

I've done a few celebrity-related things, and I think on the first one - about Mick Jagger - I got stung and was not able to make the film I wanted to make.

People listen to The Beatles, but while they were muscially influential, they weren't culturally influential in quite the same way. You can go into the back of beyond in a little Indian village, and they will listen to Bob Marley. But they're not going to be listening to The Beatles or The Rolling Stones.

The thing with newspapers is that they are a filter. We're relying on the editors of that paper to be a filter and to tell you that this is worth reading about, this is quality, and this is quite reliable.

When you're an outsider and going into a culture like America, it's easier to stay away from any cliches because you're not really aware of what they are.

Young people read their news online; they expect to get their news for free.

It is hard to find the soul of Mick Jagger. It is very hidden. I think his true personality has receded so far behind the facade that he can no longer find the real person himself.

Documentary makers use other people's lives as their raw material, and that is morally indefensible.

I did not want to depict Al Gashey as evil. I wanted him to come across as someone who did what he did for reasons that were compelling. Whether or not we agree with him is a different matter.