Ken Loach

“It's more interesting to see new people on the screen when you go to the cinema. I don't want to see the same old faces.”

“If you think back to the great French directors it's difficult to think of British film-makers who are comparable.”

“I challenge the idea that films about rich people are escapism and films about working class people are dour and sad. I find the opposite's the case.”

“Surprise is something that's very difficult to act.”

“Those in power always try to distort reality, to suit their needs and keep things safe.”

“When I was young, you were told that if you had a skill, you would find a job for life and you could bring up a family on the wage.”

“In the 1980s, I had a lot of films, documentaries for television, which were about why the trade unions had failed to organize resistance to Margaret Thatcher's plans. And they were banned. I had to fight for those films.”

“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.”

“Anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and all forms of racism are horrible.”

“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.”

“We made 'The Wind That Shakes the Barley' about the war of independence and the civil war, which were the pivotal moments of Irish history, really. 'Jimmy's Hall' would seem to be a smaller story 10 years later.”

“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.”

“Well, I think by and large, certainly in terms of cinema, American culture dominates our cinema, mainly in the films that are shown in the multiplexes but also in the way that it has a magnetic effect on British films.”

“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.”

“After 'The Gamekeeper' I made one other film called 'Looks and Smiles,' but making British films was very difficult. There wasn't a tradition of British cinema.”

“The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged.”

“There's so much control, so many executive producers, so many people looking over their shoulder, so many people trying to second-guess the boss. The space for writers and directors and actors to be creative is zilch.”

“My father worked in a factory and as a child it felt very secure. It felt very secure because everybody had work, the schools were free, so there was a security of knowing that the war had finished and families would come together again.”

“I'm not a great cinema-goer.”

“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.”