Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

It will never be Hollywood, the same way people think it should be. I think it will grow and it will be healthy and it will expand into more than one production house.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

They will open up to what I would call corporate broadcastings where the non-commercial material will have air time. There’s no possibility of that here right now, none.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Most independent filmmakers in Britain and North America work for commercial crews and then have their own projects when they’ve got enough money saved up to do so.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

Video just accesses international information so much more readily.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

In 1975 Australia was producing things like Picnic at Hanging Rock, in other words films that I would consider still some of the finest products to come out of Australia. I think that our quality...

It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

Ten years ago I was not heavily involved in the film world but on reflection it was a boom time with the mineral boom happening, so there was immense growth for industrial training films, documentaries...

‘Educational’ refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.

We are getting more and more not only the trained but also internationally well-experienced people coming here. So it’s all adding up.

If it wasn’t for the fun and money, I really don’t know why I’d bother.

All the arts are predominantly national, and therefore the Australian Film Commission should be funding us. The battle gets more and more vicious each year.

The public is a bad guesser.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

The British needlewoman follows blindly where the merchant leads.

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

We are here predominantly to support independent filmmakers and their needs. We are also here to assist people actually in their production, non-commercial people in their production.

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

Any new producer starting up is to get investors’ confidence. Investors are still very very wary of anything to do with the arts world.

The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting “All the Gods are bastards.”

The dichotomy between art and industry is totally dysfunctional in terms of film.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

We are not yet at the point where our size, our being the drama industry, is sufficient to support full time professional crews, and that is very very important.

You can’t remember the plot of the Dr Who movie because it didn’t have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.

Build into each budget the cost of hiring and don’t lump yourself with capital investment.

Build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for the night. Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

The existing documentary makers still believe that it is impossible to produce drama material in this State, otherwise they would be doing it, they say.

Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.

We are the only state that does not have a State Film Corporation there to support the commercial industry.

You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

Film is the most expensive, highest risk industry in the world.

My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign...

The more commercial work that is happening, the more people are operating cameras and are setting up studio lights, the greater the opportunity for drama production to happen.

I didn’t go to university. Didn’t even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

We discovered that there was a great deal of keen interest in America for the kinds of products that we thought could be produced here. Also there was an interest in Britain for Australian material...

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

For the first time in one place in the west, there were important people from all the other states, all aspects of the film world.

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remainds perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.

The State Film Authority will be there for film as industry only, as is the case in all the other states, except Victoria. Victoria is moving more now into supporting non-commercial films.

I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro.

We probably do not have a large enough industry here to ably support the independent filmmaker to move in and out. Much of the industry is based on full-time jobs here, institutionalised jobs.