«Whenever you go to these things, everyone's modest and say they don't want to be nominated but it's great publicity and attention for the film.»

«It was important in this case because there's a couple of subjects I know a little about but I need to know a lot about.»

«It's a bloody relief»

«I want a film [that doesn't do that], that offers real hope and offers a realistic reflection of who we are and how we behave and still rocks you and moves you like cinema should.»

«On one level it is quite an ambitious sprawling narrative.»

«The threat of disintegration and collapse in this family and to a certain extent the heroic struggle of the central character in overcoming the problems that beset her is real. It's real, you know? It's not the stuff of losers, it's the stuff of ordinary families, ordinary suburban families. Not the working class poor, not the silly rich, it's the stuff of every single family I know. There is a family member, there is a beloved friend who is beset by the life and death struggle to do with drug addiction and getting free of it.»

«I could have easily made Little Fish without the stars. I could have. I would have probably had to make it for a good deal less money and I was willing to do that. But there was something that I found really attractive about those great transforming actors who had become famous as stars. To put those people in the role of ordinary folk in the suburbs of Sydney to me was actually interesting in itself, not just as a way of getting people into the movies, but a way of reflecting what I want to do with Little Fish ? and that is to say that we are all little fish! It doesn't matter how famous or successful we are, we are all little fish.»

«I am inspired by movies with distinctive directorial signatures that boldly underscore the writing,»

«It's a film about the pull of the past and the fact that whether you're a rehabilitating heroin addict or an ageing rugby league footballer or even a criminal kingpin, you have to let go of the past in order to live the present,»

«It's a film about the pull of the past and the fact that whether you're a rehabilitating heroin addict or an ageing rugby league footballer or even a criminal kingpin, you have to let go of the past in order to live the present.»