KEN LOACH

I think you find amongst ordinary people there are a lot of people that are really talented.

Preparation is really important for actors; they need to know who they are, where they're from, and the experiences up to the point that we make the film.

All politicians will say they celebrate the NHS, but to a greater or lesser extent, they've all undermined it.

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.

I made one contribution to a film about the 11th of September: there were 11 directors and everyone had a different take on that. Some I thought were valid and some less so, but there was a substantial point that knitted all the films together - a comment on the bombing of the World Trade Center - so there was something to get your teeth into.

What strikes me - we're apparently at the mercy of an economic system that will never work and the big question is, how do we change it, not how do we put up with it.

You've only got to look at a film to see that it has to be collaborative - the images, the performances and all the art direction and the costume, everything shrieks collaboration.

The old Craven Cottage stadium at Fulham, before they built the river stand; that was a great place to watch football. When the football wasn't very good, people used to turn around and watch the boats on the river.

It's a great privilege to make a film, to have it shown, and for people to see it.

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.

I wasn't from a political family. Nobody talked politics.

There are different cinema traditions in France, Spain and other European countries. There's a much stronger intellectual tradition: cinema is seen in a more serious way.

Iain Duncan Smith and his regime, they wanted to make the poor suffer and then humiliated them by telling them that their poverty was their own fault and, to demonstrate that, if you're not up to mark then you're sanctioned and the money stops.

There's a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.

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

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.

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.

You'll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone.

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.

I've been going to Labour party meeting for over 50 years.

The Labour election of 1945 was a tremendous victory for democratic ownership of the economy.

There's no great desire to own lots of stuff - and I don't. You can only live in one house and drive one car.

The BBC is very aware of its role in shaping people's consciousness… it's manipulative and deeply political.

Don't take advice. You have to make up your own mind what to do from the beginning.