Michael Winner Quotes

A team effort is a lot of people, doing what I say.

So this is it: goodbye. I’ve been writing this column for nearly 20 years and I don’t want a carriage clock or a gold watch. I am trying to get rid of stuff, not collect it.

[Marlon] Brando was my best friend, [Robert] Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, even though he tried to kill me three times.

[To extras dressed as London policemen] You're just standing there! DOING NOTHING! Why should I pay you for doing nothing? I want you to run. You understand run! [...] R-U-N? RUN?

If you’re dead, you're dead, so who cares.

[From the section entitled "Winner Talking" in a personal booklet] Lunacy is a very important quality for a successful director. Most top directors are quite a bit batty. That's what makes them great. They can conceive fantasies beyond the normal mind. Another quality is just keeping alive. It is quite remarkable that no director has been murdered in cold blood on the set.

If I could go back, I would spend much more, earlier. No question. This sounds absolutely crass, but I would have taken private planes earlier, would have had a chauffeur and better cars earlier, I'd have bought better paintings earlier.

I think with less accomplished actors you often have to play tricks [...] You may actually want to upset them to make them look upset on the screen so they carry that forward.

I really don't care if I get anything or not. [...] I'm very glad that they recognise my considerable skills as a toilet cleaner.

I think the lesbians have come over with considerable dignity and you have come over as an arsehole.

An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station.

I ALWAYS LIKED MR STALIN

I don't want to do something for the sake of it. I am prepared to wait. If I wait until I am buried, too bad.

[On the Swiss Dignitas assisted dying clinic] It's not a walk-in death. You don't just go in and say, "Here I am, do your worst". You have to go through a whole series of papers and re-examinations just to die. You have to fill in forms and things and go have to fly there, go back twice.

I think if I had my life again I would not be so utterly self-satisfied. (2004)