"Seeing Paul Scofield and Irene Worth act in Peter Brook’s great production in 1962 led me to attempt my own in 1985 with Anthony Hopkins playing the king."

"Wings of Desire, by Wim Wenders. The guy who wrote the screenplay, Peter Handke, is a playwright in Germany, and I was very much a part of reading the avant garde writers, be it plays or novels. I loved his writing, it was so strong and so sharp, and when the film came out, I just loved it. Everything about it was marvelous. Bruno Ganz was so brilliant. He’s brilliant most of the time. On our side of the ocean, let’s say, he was one of our stars, like Redford and Paul Newman and Brando were on that side. I had a few European actors where I went, “They’re so fantastic.”"

"I lived a stone's throw from Penny Lane, and my sister had Beatles wallpaper, my brother had a plastic Beatles wig and Beatles cap, and they were older than me, and my auntie Kathleen - who was a bit of a ... swinging sixties... a Liver bird, put it that way - came to live with us and she brought with her Sgt. Pepper's. She would go and see concerts like Gene Pitney at the Liverpool Empire and things like that. She was quite an interesting woman - to me anyway - and was great fun. I had one of those portable record players like you did in the 1960s, and I would play this over and over again while staring at the Peter Blake/Jann Howarth record sleeve, which made a 3D collage, and asking people ""who's this?"" and ""who is this?"". I've said it before, it was a bit like Dorothy opening the door of the house once it's arrived in Munchkinland, and everything goes technicolour from the black and white-ness of 1960s Liverpool. It was like a portal into things like the Hollywood musicals that I'd been seeing on the Saturday morning at the pictures. My auntie Kath would say, ""Ooh I saw The Beatles in the Liverpool passport office getting a passport while I was getting mine"" and my mum would go, ""I knew Julia when she used to look like Lucille Ball and she used to strut down the street"", and so it was Beatles saturation, living in that particular part of town. 'She's Leaving Home' on that album was the first song that made me cry, which I think is quite an important moment in your life, when a piece of music makes you cry. It was just the sadness of the story of a girl leaving home. Then of course there was 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds', 'A Day In The Life' and all those odd string arrangements. There was also the Magical Mystery Tour double EP in gatefold technicolour glory and things like that. It was like an entry into a world that was distant yet very close as well. It made me want to learn the lyrics to sing along and I guess it was just very important to me in my journey of music appreciation. And if you had the measles or chicken pox, you were quarantined to my sister's bedroom, and it was like a TARDIS of 'John Paul George Ringo' and it would drive you absolutely insane, as it was all you could read: 'John Paul George Ringo John Paul George Ringo John Paul George Ringo' and their smiling happy faces. It was kind of great and yet torturous at the same time. Pop torture."

"That first McCartney solo record was an eye-opener. I was aware that The Beatles were breaking up and I was aware that McCartney was bringing out a solo record and, song after song it was, you know, decent! The production wasn't like Beatles production, but it was decent enough. The playing wasn't as good as Beatles playing, but it was good enough. Then I found out that he wrote, engineered, produced, played all the background - except Linda would show up here and there - it was a one-man band. I mean everything! Drums, keyboards, everything, then engineered it, then produced it, did it all. Unbelievable! He only had these four machines with these RCA knobs, very primitive equipment. It's a real tour de force. He's not a great guitar player, not a bad guitar player, he plays just good enough to be able to get those parts down. It just comes down to song writing. You've got 'Junk', or ""Maybe I'm amazed by the way you love me all the time"" - that could have been a Beatles song! There's another great story in how he and Lennon would work together and McCartney would bring songs to Lennon and Lennon would pooh-pooh them and one of those songs was a song called 'Woman'. McCartney brought it and Lennon said, 'That's not great'. So then McCartney said: 'Look I'm going to prove it to you, I'll give it to Peter and Gordon and they'll have a number one record.' Lennon purportedly said, 'Yeah, but that's because your name is Paul McCartney.' And McCartney says, 'Okay I'll change the name to Bernard Webb', and, sure enough, he gives it to Peter and Gordon and... number one. He did it again with Badfinger, brought in another song that Lennon purportedly said wasn't good enough, called 'Come And Get It'. I mean, what the fuck is it? Anyway, another number one song."