Baser Quotes

On becoming Dame Helen Mirren in 2003, "In England, it`s a big deal. I do feel it`s a great honor. But I had to think about it quite seriously for a couple of weeks. It does sort of squash you into the establishment thing. In the end, my baser feelings got the better of me. I succumbed to pride."

(On his movie "Happiness"): "It`s not for everyone and it`s not designed for everyone and I don`t think I`ll ever write anything that`s designed to appeal to everyone. If you want sympathetic characters it`s easy enough to do, you just give someone cancer and of course we`ll all feel horribly sad and sorry. You make anyone a victim and people feel that way. But that`s not of interest to me as a filmmaker or as a writer. I may be accused of a certain kind of misanthropy but I think I could argue the opposite. I think that it`s only by acknowledging the flaws, the foibles, the failings and so forth of who we are that we can in fact fully embrace the all of who we are. People say I`m cruel or that the film`s cruel, but I think rather it exposes the cruelty and I think that certainly the capacity for cruelty is the most difficult, the most painful thing for any of us to acknowledge. That we are at all capable. And yet I think that it exists as much as the capacity for kindness and it`s only the best of us that are able to suppress, sublimate, re-channel and so forth these baser instincts, but I see them to some degree at play as a regular part of life in very subtle ways and not so subtle ways. I don`t think that after the seventh grade that these impulses evaporate. So from my perspective I`m trying to be honest with what I see and what I`ve experienced and what I believe is true to our nature."

Vengeance was a funny thing: You wanted the satisfaction of knowing it had occurred, but you never wanted to actually hear the words out loud, because then you`d have to admit to yourself that you`d wanted proof, and that somehow made you baser, less civilized.