"I learned to stop being English about things like love. If you make a film in England about love, it's hugely complicated.... It's all about saying what the weather is like, and you're secretly telling someone you love them.... Let's be honest, it's not like that in India. India is incredibly uncynical about love. It's not a complicated thing. It's me, you, love — let's go." — Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy on what he learned while filming Slumdog Millionaire

"I'm always insecure on set, no matter what." — Penelope Cruz, on her fears over her work in Vicky Cristina Barcelona

"I hope it makes you feel a little less alone.... Where I'm from, they just don't know that there are gay heroes. They don't know if there's other gay people. They don't know if there's a potential future and a beautiful future awaiting us.... I hope it inspires some folks." — Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black on his win's potential message for young people

"It's like that song, 'Love Is Wonderful the Second Time Around.' So is an Oscar." — Andrew Stanton, WALL-E's director

"When he came home for Christmas a year ago, he had been sending me shots and bits and pieces of the film. He hadn't seen them, I hadn't seen them, no one had really seen them. He knew, when I said 'I have a feeling, this is it for you, you're going to get a nomination.' And he just looked at me and smiled." — Heath Ledger's sister, Kate

"My mum won a pickled onion competition in a pub just before Christmas. And that was a big deal! And the Reading [England] Evening Post sent me a picture of her holding up her jar. Well, Reading Evening Post, there's your next Winslet picture! ... You just don't think that these dreams that seem so silly and so impossible could ever really come true.... I've got to tell you, winning is really a lot better than losing!" — Kate Winslet, after hugging a reporter who'd known her when she was a teen in Reading, England

"He's an excellent bridge-burner at times, but we've had for the most part a very close friendship. And he's somebody that I had alternately looked up to and advised and directed, wanted to work with and admired and [who] quite literally had me, almost throughout The Wrestler, weeping." — Sean Penn on Mickey Rourke

"There's this amazing poet ... called W.H. Auden, and he wrote this amazing poem.... It's to do with Americans trying to travel to the moon.... And he [says,] 'Soon, you'll be putting jukeboxes on the moon.' I love that expression. And that's what tonight feels like." — Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle