Life is really hard for some people.

I think I've been very, very lucky in my life, and I do believe in public service.

For me, trying to articulate the world to help people see it in a way they haven't seen it before is hugely important. Sometimes, you have to take something that is completely inexplicable and say, 'Look, here is the beating heart of something you must understand.'

This idea of the digital native in the bedroom taking down a fascist regime and building a billion-dollar company is a very attractive image, but actually, if you look at the research, young people are on the lowest rung of digital opportunity.

We are increasingly offered a diet in which sensation, not story, is king.

The film that changed my life is a 1951 film by Vittorio De Sica, 'Miracle in Milan.' It's a remarkable comment on slums, poverty and aspiration.

Cinema is arguably the 20th century's most influential art form.

Whether in cave paintings or the latest uses of the Internet, human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.

Parents cannot be in the same physical space as their children at all times.

When politicians say, 'Oh, parents should supervise their kids' Internet use,' it drives me crazy.

The thing I have come to find astonishing is that people from all political sides routinely say that the Internet has to be the model of free speech and freedom.

I come from the school who thought the Internet could be the great democratising force, that getting rid of the gatekeepers was a positive move.

I don't see such a huge difference between online and 'in real life'. I think it has now become one and the same.

The idea of the Internet as sort of open and democratic and free and with no hierarchy, the libertarian beginnings as it were, with peer-to-peer networks... I'd sort of like for everyone to just admit that we're beyond that now.

If Twitter is worth seven billion next month, I'm happy for them to be worth six billion and spend a billion making it safer for people, for example.

I hate it when everybody thinks I'm a... what's the word, a marauding mother! It's bigger than that.

People have a right to have their lives witnessed; if we coexist with the systems that abuse people, then we have a duty to understand.

Making a big commercial movie is hard when you think about how many of them flop.

I think it is a great gift to make people laugh, and it shouldn't be underestimated.

I've walked down the street with Madonna, and I've walked down the street with Colin Firth, and it was a little bit more... with Madonna they were a little rougher, but they were all there for Colin. It was amazing. Women adore him. They swoon.

I once gave a talk at a girls' school and, once I'd finished, 29 out of the 30 girls wanted to be film directors. I think that's where we need to get girls interested in making films. We need to give them the idea that they can, that it's one of the things on their horizon.

From the moment I went to Hollywood for the first time, I was accused by various people of selling out. So I feel I've done my sell-out films already. I've sold everything! I've sold every piece of soul I ever had!

The way we finance homes in this country is slow, filled with middlemen, who run a nonstandardized evaluation process. This makes financing a home cumbersome and difficult.

In New York, the former lack of real competition allowed taxis to extract excessive charges, regardless of the poor service.