"So this is it: goodbye. I’ve been writing this column for nearly 20 years and I don’t want a carriage clock or a gold watch. I am trying to get rid of stuff, not collect it."

"[Marlon] Brando was my best friend, [Robert] Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, even though he tried to kill me three times."

"A team effort is a lot of people, doing what I say."

"I think with less accomplished actors you often have to play tricks [...] You may actually want to upset them to make them look upset on the screen so they carry that forward."

"[To extras dressed as London policemen] You're just standing there! DOING NOTHING! Why should I pay you for doing nothing? I want you to run. You understand run! [...] R-U-N? RUN?"

"[From the section entitled "Winner Talking" in a personal booklet] Lunacy is a very important quality for a successful director. Most top directors are quite a bit batty. That's what makes them great. They can conceive fantasies beyond the normal mind. Another quality is just keeping alive. It is quite remarkable that no director has been murdered in cold blood on the set."

"So when I'm directing now, you see, I'm thinking of myself, I'm projecting myself in five weeks' time, sitting in a little room with two assistants, saying, "I now need a piece of film when Mr. Caine does this, or Mr. Moore does that." And if I haven't got it, I say, "Damn it, I should have gotten that." So all the time I'm imagining myself in that little X-time hence which is why I can shoot a very complicated pattern without any pre-planning. Because I'm two people. I'm Arnold Crust, the editor, and I'm Michael Winner, the director."

"I think the lesbians have come over with considerable dignity and you have come over as an arsehole."

"If I could go back, I would spend much more, earlier. No question. This sounds absolutely crass, but I would have taken private planes earlier, would have had a chauffeur and better cars earlier, I'd have bought better paintings earlier."

"[On his mother, Helen] Nice, little, white-haired lady. She was a killer. If she decided she wasn't happy about something, she was acid."

"An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station."

"I really don't care if I get anything or not. [...] I'm very glad that they recognise my considerable skills as a toilet cleaner."

"But when you look at the rubbish who are getting these awards and the absolute non-service they have given to the nation other than financing or working for political parties, you say, "What company am I in?" At least if you go straight to the House of Lords you can wear fancy dress and have a giggle."

"I don't want to do something for the sake of it. I am prepared to wait. If I wait until I am buried, too bad."

"I ALWAYS LIKED MR STALIN"

"Everyone has heard of Canterbury if only because they murder archbishops there."

"he was determined to make Earthsea into a movie."

"Of course, all films are surrealist. They are because they are making something that looks like a real world but isn't."

"I am the teller of the tale, not the creator of the story."

"Seventy years ago there were men like D.W. Griffith and seventy years later - now - there are not many men like Martin Scorsese. But so long as there is one there will be others, and the art of the cinema will survive."

"The truth lies in black and white."

"[After Peeping Tom] When they got me on my own [the critics] gleefully sawed off the limb and jumped up and down on the corpse."

"Art is merciless observation, sympathy, imagination, and a sense of detachment that is almost cruelty."

"The great innovators have always been fearless.... I have fallen off haystacks, out of trees, over cliffs. I have been nearly drowned, shot and hanged. I have been in countless car crashes without getting a scratch. I have been alone in an office with Louis B. Mayer."

"Actors and technicians were being demobbed every day. Very soon the only ham actor left in the combined forces would be General George Patton."

"For ten years we had all been told to go out and die for freedom and democracy; but now the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art."

"We decided to go ahead with David O. (Selznick) the way hedgehogs make love: verrry carefully !"

"My master in film, Buñuel, was a far greater storyteller than I. It was just that in my films miracles occur on the screen."

"[Cinematographer] Jack Cardiff once asked Powell "Michael, do you make films for all types of audiences, or just for yourself?" Michael shook his head vigorously. "I make films for myself. What I express I hope most people will understand. For the rest, well, that's their problem.""

"[of his wife Frankie] In fact, if only I had been the perfect husband, she would have been the perfect wife."

"I got my first assignment as a director in 1927. I was slim, arrogant, intelligent, foolish, shy, cocksure, dreamy and irritating. Today, I'm no longer slim."

"I live cinema. I chose the cinema when I was very young, sixteen years old, and from then on my memories virtually coincide with the history of the cinema ... I'm not a director with a personal style, I am simply cinema. I have grown up with and through cinema; everything that I've had in the way of education has been through the cinema; insofar as I'm interested in images, in books, in music, it's all due to the cinema."

"We have not had any disagreements about clothes, smoking or L'Wren, and this is all very hurtful for her... It is completely untrue to say that L'Wren has caused a rift between myself and the rest of the band. This is all nonsense, everyone has their own style."

"I'm pleased that the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of the expat bankers and their girlfriends that are going to be coming."

"I see a red door and I want it painted black No colors anymore, I want them to turn black I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I have to turn my head until my darkness goes I see a line of cars and they're all painted black With flowers and my love, both never to come back I see people turn their heads and quickly look away Like a new born baby, it just happens every day I look inside myself and see my heart is black I see my red door, I must have it painted black Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts It's not easy facing up, when your whole world is black"

"Let's drink to the hard working people Let's drink to the salt of the earth ...Raise your glass to the hard working people ...Who need leaders but get gamblers instead"

"Childhood living is easy to do The things you wanted, I bought them for you Graceless lady, you know who I am You know I can't let you slide through my hands Wild horses couldn't drag me away Wild, wild horses, couldn't drag me away."

"I know I've dreamed you, a sin and a lie I have my freedom but I don't have much time Faith has been broken, tears must be cried Let's do some living, after we die Wild horses couldn't drag me away Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them some day…"

"Yes, star-crossed in pleasure, the stream flows on by Yes, as we're sated in leisure, we watch it fly, yes And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me... Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste... Drink in your summer, gather your corn... The dreams of the nighttime will vanish by dawn"

"I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment... it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, 'It's a fucking paltry honour.'"

"If you think that Mick Jagger will still be doing the whole rock star thing at age fifty, well, then, you are sorely, sorely mistaken."

"There's not many Americans, certainly not many of the teenagers I met when I first went to America, knew anything about [blues musicians] at all. … They do now, which is very groovy."

"Very simple. I'm putting up the money, and I also have ears."

"The host is pathetic! The show is pathetic! The audience is pathetic!"

"You know Paula, who I couldn't look at the beginning of the series... I love her to death now. I hate to admit it but I do."

"Sinitta and Jackie are my family now. I don't think of them as ex-girlfriends anymore. They are an extension of my life... It must be infuriating, but I'd never change because my ex-girlfriends are so close I couldn't imagine life without them."

"Normally, they want me to be rude to them. People come up to me and sing, and I say "That was great. Thank you." And they're like "Well, aren't you going to be rude to me?" No! When I miss auditions, contestants get upset that I'm not there, because they expect me to be cruel to them — it's some sort of badge of honor. That's how crazy everything is."