"Mentally, Casablanca connects with my world. It’s very romantic, about giving and testing, and trusting and loving… And there’s the romantic music. Everything is [in line with] my tastes of romance. It’s also about an unfulfilled love, which makes everything more beautiful because you can’t have it. It’s just human nature. If you have it — you see the person, you see the romance — then the story becomes practical, like reality. But because it’s unfulfilled, it’s always a fantasy because we add so much of our own beauty, and romance, and poetry, into it. Also, Casablanca is about the sacrifice of giving love. Real love, I think, is unconditional; you give your love away to love somebody. Otherwise it’s not real love, it’s possessive, it’s ownership."

"A truly inspiring movie. Kurosawa is one of those rare directors who knows how to tell a story in the compelling way we all like to see them told on-screen. In Ikiru, we, as individual viewers, so identify with the moment-to-moment experience of the main character (played by the great Takashi Shimura) that somehow it becomes our own story. As we watch this movie, we progressively go through bouts of fear and guilt and then, by movie’s end, achieve a sad satisfaction coupled with the personal conviction that we must somehow do better as human beings. This one becomes even more moving as we get older and the story becomes closer to our own reality. This one puts me through the ringer every time."

"Philip Gourevitch has written a riveting book about the Rwandan genocide and the title is part of a note to his pastor from a man who knew he was going to be killed the next day. This book examines the darkest side of human beings. As the mother of many children, including seven sons I realise the importance of bringing up my sons to find peaceful resolutions to conflict – the reality is that it is men who are the violent perpetrators. This killing component is very likely responsible for the survival of the human species over many, many centuries. But now our weaponry has succeeded our wisdom and we have not evolved away from the brutality that was useful to early human beings."