A Quote by Mike Leigh

I hope I make films where you walk away . . . with work to do, arguments to have, things to worry about, things to care about. In that sense, I would regard what I do as political.
There are no expectations on a 40-year-old man. All I have to worry about is intensity, and things will take care of themselves. I don't have to worry about championships, all-star games, contracts. I can just walk on the court and play.
I do not make films which are prescriptive, and I do not make films that are conclusive. You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong. They're ambivalent. You walk away with work to do. My films are a sort of investigation. They ask questions . . .. Sometimes I hear that some [Hollywood] studio is interested in me. Then they discover that this is the guy who works with no script, that there is no casting discussion, no interference, that I have the final cut, and that does it.
I would think a sense of the absurd is more important for a political cartoonist, because that could define things like a sense of hypocrisy or a sense of the things one has to be skeptical about.
It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.
It's healthier if you kind of just walk away from things and not really care about what happens.
That's the great thing about being a director. You have your list of things you have to worry about and things you don't have to worry about. If you can hire someone or cast someone who equates to not having to worry about, it's great!
If you took all of my money away, I would have it right back. I don't really care about money. I mean I do but why worry about it because I can make my own money all the time.
Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear.
It's already not as easy, in the sense that interesting roles for girls and women tend to be few and far between. That's just the reality that I think most people would agree with. So that can be frustrating. I just get sent so many things that are like, "So, here's another story about a guy...." But that's just what it is. I'm kind of getting more excited about developing my own stuff, or getting involved early in projects and doing my best to make things that I care about happen.
Some of my understanding of what philosophy and ethics is has changed very slowly. One thing that has changed is this for quite a long time I bought-into the idea that philosophy is basically about arguments. I'm increasingly of the view that it isn't. The most interesting things in philosophy aren't arguments. The thing that I think is underestimated is what I call a form of attending. I think that philosophy is at least as much about carefully attending to things as it is about the structure of arguments.
I make notes about things I see in films that really affect me, like the ending of 'Jules and Jim.' I think about how I can utilize things in my work. And I have a team of people who keep me down to earth.
I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care.
All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I'd worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: 'Don't hide these things from me. I'd rather you ask me these things straight out, and I'll answer all your questions.'
With abstract work, I never was quite sure what it was that felt right about the painting, but I did know that I responded to it and I liked whatever it was offering me. That's something that seems to happen as well when I'm writing, where maybe things that don't necessarily make a lot of logical sense are put together, and yet we struggle to make sense of these things somehow. I'm not quite sure why that is; it's something about human nature, I guess.
We are a family that likes to keep things abreast about what's happening in the country so dinner table conversations revolve around Social, political, films... a bit of everything. Films we talk about the least in fact.
Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like.
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