Andrew Haigh

“Certain people like the way I make films, and others do not. I've come to terms with the fact that there's no other way I can make films. If I tried to do it in a different way, it would never work.”

“People like a bit of honesty in films.”

“I only want to tell films that I really feel passionate about telling.”

“If you're struggling, it's easy to feel powerless until you take control of it and assert what you want. I can understand that feeling. I can understand how it feels to be alone, to not want to get help from people and to not trust people who are actually wanting the best for you. I feel like that's true for a lot of people, actually.”

“America is so diverse.”

“I like going to a new environment with open eyes.”

“I'm interested in how we understand ourselves in our relatioships and how we define ourselves.”

“The reality of our lives is never like what you see in those romantic comedies or dramas. Things don't always end good. Things don't usually end good.”

“Relationships are so important to all of us.”

“Class is really interesting to me, maybe because I'm from England where there is a pretty hideous, deep-rooted obsession with class. I don't like the obsession with class, but it certainly interests me.”

“We get older, and we get more wrinkles, but fundamentally, we stay the same... You have the same fears and doubts and concerns and dreams and passions and all those kinds of things, so I feel like you don't change as much as you think you do.”

“For a long time, gay men fought to be seen as different, doing our own thing: This is our lives; this is what we do. Accept it. There's a conservatism that has come into the gay community: 'We're just like you, just like everyone else.'”

“If you don't open your eyes to other people's lives, you can't even begin to understand how the world works at all.”

“We pass people in the street and ignore them when they're clearly suffering. It makes you wish we could all feel when someone needs something.”

“My straight friends accept I'm gay but they forget that some people don't. Even now, if I go into a party, people don't usually assume I'm gay, so you have to keep coming out. And if you say you've got a film with a gay subject matter, you can sometimes see people's eyes going, 'Oh! OK!'”

“I rode a horse once when I was young, and I fell off. I never wanted to ride a horse again.”

“We have a choice every day to do whatever we do, and that choice is quite scary because it could absolutely change everything about our lives. It's important to keep reminding myself that I have a choice.”

“That's the biggest thing I struggle with. We could never hope to represent every gay person in America. There will be people who will say, 'Well, my experience of being gay isn't like that,' to which I can only say, 'That's fine.'”

“The kinds of films I like are the ones that take their time. If you reach an emotional pinnacle too early on in a film, that's kind of it. I think, as in real life, when you're getting to know someone, it starts off slowly.”