"My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

"I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest."

"I believe we now have a glorious opportunity: we can pass our laws and set our taxes entirely according to the needs of the U.K. economy."

"It is easy to make promises - it is hard work to keep them."

"My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it."

"If we vote to Leave and take back control, all sorts of opportunities open up. Including doing new free trade deals around the world, restoring Britain's seat on all sorts of international bodies, restoring health to our democracy and belief to our democracy."

"I've got more in common with a three-toed sloth than I have with Winston Churchill. There is no easy comparison with any modern politician. The more you read about him, the more completely amazed you are about what he did - his energy, his literary fecundity, his ability to work - just unbelievable energy."

"If we get outside the EU, if we leave the EU system, we will be relieved of a huge amount of unnecessary regulation that is holding this country back. We will be able to set our own priorities, make our own laws and set our own tax policies to suit the needs of this country. We have a huge opportunity also to make people's votes count for more."

"If you turn a blind eye to fare evasion, if you accustom people to getting away with minor crime, you are making it more likely that they will go on to commit more serious crimes. That is why we have so much disorder in London. It is a disgrace."

"I just find it absolutely bizarre that we are being lectured by the Americans about giving up our sovereignty and giving up control when the Americans won't even sign up to the international convention on the law of the seas, let alone the International Criminal Court."

"We were told by President Obama that in respect of international trade, we would have to get to the back of the queue - not a position that America normally requires the United Kingdom to be in when it comes to other matters, such as the Iraq War."

"I'm in politics to change things - if possible, for the better. I was a journalist for a long time, but I had a kind of midlife crisis, and I decided I needed to do something to get on the pitch and stop endlessly kicking over other peoples' sandcastles."

"Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff."

"I think I'm basically a liberal Conservative - I believe in low tax, spirit of free enterprise, and in making sure that we as politicians create the framework for business to produce the dosh that we're going to need to pay for the poorest. And the longer I live, the more I think that we all have a duty to each other."

"When lorry drivers come up behind me and I'm cycling, innocently keeping to my side of the road, and they decide because they are so big, and their lorry is so powerful, and they just want to clear me out of the road, and they hoot aggressively, then I do see red a bit. I do."

"If I'd been on the Remain side I would have tried to have seen the best in Europe and tried to explain that. Instead, what they've done is endlessly try and talk up what they see as the weaknesses of Britain and they aren't there. That's a total mistake."

"The Remain campaign... I've never seen a more miserable offering. All they are saying is stay in and we'll do our best to make sure that Britain's Parliamentary independence isn't eroded faster than we can possibly imagine."

"The truth is that the history of the last couple of thousand years has been broadly repeated attempts by various people or institutions - in a Freudian way - to rediscover the lost childhood of Europe, this golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans, by trying to unify it."

"My point was very simple, and it was that it is absolutely absurd for the United States of America to continue to urge us further down the line towards a federal superstate when the U.S. has not even signed up to the U.N. Convention on Human Rights."

"I see religion more as a truck stop on your way to figuring out who you are."

"What we're seeing now is that greed is still alive and kicking, and banks are bigger than ever."

"Seeing the world is the best education you can get. You see sorrow, and you also see great spirit and will to survive."

"We sometimes let ourselves be rated too much by others - we put so much emphasis on a paycheck or what a magazine says."

"I'm an Obama supporter, no question. But it doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from the other side."

"I am obsessively bent on quality - to an unhealthy degree."

"The Internet has done a wonderful thing for us. But democracy doesn't work unless people are well informed, and I don't know that we are. People just don't have the time."

"It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides."

"So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done."

"Family - and certainly kids and a stable relationship - is something bigger than yourself. They need you to sit down with them, be there for them when they wake up in the middle of the night."

"I tell all the young guys, don't make choices because somebody else is telling you it's good from a career-maintenance perspective."

"Certainly the attrition rate of Hollywood couples looms large."

"I think someone's conversation, whether in e-mail or in person, should be private."

"I just don't like the separatism that comes from religion, and, without fail, the need to put your beliefs on someone else. When you start telling someone else how to live, you should check yourself, man."

"In some ways, I'm still a kid from Missouri and Oklahoma, and I'm trying to find my way."

"You want to stake your own claim. You don't want to be called a copycat."

"Once you get older, you get a little closer to yourself, intimate."

"To leave home, it's got to be worth leaving."

"I'm actually very snobbish about directors. I have to say 'no' all the time. 'No' is the most powerful word in our business. You've got to protect yourself."

"My training is documented on film."

"I always knew I was going somewhere - going out. I just knew. I just knew. I just knew there were a lot more points of view out there."

"If I'm going to work, I want to work with my wife."

"I'd say that 'Tree of Life' is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film."

"One of the greatest, smartest things I ever did was give my kids Angie as their mom. She is such a great mom. Oh, man, I'm so happy to have her."

"'The Assassination of Jesse James' remains one of my favorite films that I've done. You know, it's still labeled a loser."

"I think L.A. is impossible. There's just too much media focus. You can't live a normal life."

"I always thought that if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big. I wanted there to be chaos in the house."

"I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up."

"I would love to work in a Bollywood film as there is so much drama and colour in the films there."

"Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace."

"I'm 48 now and whatever I get music-wise, I get from my kids and that's it. I don't think I'll ever be hip again!"