Quotes from Ken Loach

You'll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone.

All politicians will say they celebrate the NHS, but to a greater or lesser extent, they've all undermined it.

The European Union is an institution that is in the interest of big business, not the European people. So it's understandable that some people thought we should leave.

The old Craven Cottage stadium at Fulham, before they built the river stand; that was a great place to watch football. When the football wasn't very good, people used to turn around and watch the boats on the river.

I was stage-struck from an early age. I just loved the language. We lived quite near Stratford so I would cycle and watch the plays.

It's more interesting to see new people on the screen when you go to the cinema. I don't want to see the same old faces.

In the 1980s, I had a lot of films, documentaries for television, which were about why the trade unions had failed to organize resistance to Margaret Thatcher's plans. And they were banned. I had to fight for those films.

A journalist uses the most precise words he or she can. An artist does the same sort of thing. You gather material about a particular subject, you refine it as best you can.

I think that cinema is medium of communication. It's as valid as novels or fine art.

Bath was dusty and a little shabby when we moved here. It did look its age and you felt its history in its streets and buildings and little alleyways. The sense of the past was palpable. There were some bad modern buildings but there was a patina of age.

Churchill the right-winger has been elevated to a status where you can't criticise him. People from the time remember him as an imperialist, a hard-right politician, very instrumental in the oppression of Ireland and the attempt to defeat the general strike.

What strikes me - we're apparently at the mercy of an economic system that will never work and the big question is, how do we change it, not how do we put up with it.

Politics lives in people, ideas live in people, they live in the concrete struggles that people have.

I challenge the idea that films about rich people are escapism and films about working class people are dour and sad. I find the opposite's the case.

Ordinary people can be very articulate and very eloquent.

I think you find amongst ordinary people there are a lot of people that are really talented.

Most cities are eclectic. There's a bit of medieval, Georgian, some Victorian and some 20th century. That's fine. Bath is different because it was built within 100 years or less. It has a homogeneity.

The Labour election of 1945 was a tremendous victory for democratic ownership of the economy.

The most enjoyable things are the old eighteenth-century terraces that are still standing, that domestic architecture.

Eric Cantona is a giggler.

Because I've been around a long time I get a bit of leeway that other people don't.

Don't take advice. You have to make up your own mind what to do from the beginning.