I'm dyslexic, which means I have trouble reading and writing. So images really speak to me.

The thing with Ryan, you can look at him for hours. Very few actors have that. It's a gift.

I grew up in the '80s and John Hughes was the filmmaker making serious movies for teenagers.

Look at the birth of anything; it's always more violent than anything you could ever imagine.

With 'Only God Forgives,' what's great about that movie is it just freaked so many people out.

Understanding one's own power is more interesting than someone being given something powerful.

Cinema is mass media, it is both overtly gross and exciting. It is our great mirror of society.

[The Neon Demon] was more my own fascination with beauty. It's my children's fascination beauty.

I feel Amazon is really bringing films into the future. So for me it was the best of both worlds.

My initial idea was I wanted to make it a horror film, very much. At times I do enter that world.

I'm not a guy's guy. I always loved girl things. I loved dolls. I loved dressing up and much more.

I think that Danish people may be thought off as the happiest people, but honestly...I love America.

My writing has always been more out of the need to write a movie rather than me being a good writer.

Filmmaking is not about what we see - it's a very misconceived notion; it's about what we don't see.

Narcissism as a virtue is very futuristic. Narcissism as a quality is where I think things are heading.

I think that experiencing through art is a wonderful way to expand the horizon and everything around it.

People have called me everything. Every word in the dictionary I've been called at one point or another.

Sometimes I just play the theme from Arthur. It reminds me of my childhood in New York and I just love it.

I like doing the promotional work. It's part of the film's process. Cannes was very wonderful to premiere.

But once you get down to reality, there's no one to play her and there's no movie. It would be ridiculous.

The most creative phase of a film is in shooting, because structure is the defining element of that phase.

I believe that the constant possibility of failure or possibility of decision-making feeds your creativity.

Creativity is narcissism. Creativity is falling in love with one's self as you create. It's self-indulgent.

I have not seen "Batman v Superman," unfortunately. It hasn't been on the plane, as I've been flying a lot.

When we met, my agenda was "Get Elle Fanning." I believe Elle's was "Get the role." But we didn't know that.

The character requires so many elements. The only one who could fulfill that was this one person: Elle Fanning.

I think the idea was to make a horror film that became a science-fiction film with a lot of melodramatic tropes.

Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying.

Everything we do is about the emotion of the characters. We believe the better the emotion, the better the movie.

The conversations about a film are an example of success because then you know whatever you've done has resonated.

I think that I am a pornographer, meaning that I make movies based on what excites me and what I would like to see.

'Valhalla Rising' is a fusion of my upbringing, basically: everything I grew up loving and wanted to make a film of.

I'm a very feminine man. I like feminine things. I don't go to strip clubs. I don't drink beer. I don't play sports.

A good director is not an expert in anything in particular. A good director just knows a little bit about everything.

Abbey Lee was a very famous model and had great success. She was very open about the negative aspects of that industry.

I always approach every film I make as if it was going to be the last. So if I'm going to go out, I'm going out with a bang.

I'm not a walking encyclopedia. I'm not one of those types that knows every single film ever made or can recite every dialog.

Personally I kept my feelings out of it and created a fantasy. That's the process of going through this world being beautiful.

I think that art is an act of violence, and the more emotionally engaged you are in a piece of art, the more violent it feels.

I don't have to go very far to see the power of beauty. Being desired, feeling desired is a very seductive aspect of our being.

I never desired to really go to Hollywood and make films, and purely because I want my entire control, which I'm used to having.

When I was 20 years old, my uncle was an arthouse distributor, and he would take me to Cannes every year to work as a film scout.

To me, the darkest film ever made and the film, to me, that's the darkest picture in the human humanity's soul is 'Pretty Woman.'

The minute you celebrate narcissism, which on one hand is very complex, it's very ridiculous. You have to love oneself with humor.

We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.

Creativity is about taking what is the norm and expanding it and continuing to expand it and expand it and expand it and expand it.

Sometimes you can play against type, or you can just repeat what they've already done. It can be an obstacle; it's a very fine line.

I don't do drugs, and so music very much gets me going. When I do something, I think, "If it was a piece of music, what would it be?"

Writing is fantasizing about what your film will be like. Shooting is reality. And the post-production is recovering the idea you had.

I remember To Live And Die In L.A. I saw that in the cinemas when I was young in the '80s. I remember the poster. It's a great poster.

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