National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word 'industry' is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.

I don’t know if there will ever be an ideal way of selling an original picture. Because everything you’re doing, you’re inventing.

I’ve become wary of interviews in which you’re forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you’ve done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive.

I enjoyed Jonathan Franzen’s ‘Freedom.’ Would I make that into a film? I think it’s better suited to television. That would very much be a dialogue and performance piece, and it would take some very skilful direction – but not my kind of directing. But I thought it was a real literary work.

I’m not from a theatrical background where people do like to work it out on some stage space.

When I began making films, they were just movies: ‘What’s the new movie? What are you doing?’ Now they’re called ‘adult dramas.’

National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we’re on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word “industry” is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.

I carve stone. I’ve got hammers and chisels and I carve from sandstone. I just did a big mural of birds and trees.

I loved Sherlock Holmes as a kid, but I remember being disappointed when he’d come up with these simple explanations for these complex mysteries.

It doesn’t take any imagination at all to feel awed.