Phrases

01. A film should be like a rock in the shoe.

02. Everything is going to hell, but we should smile all the way.

03. True values entail suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we?…Longing is true. It may be that there’s no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It’s part of our reality.

04. If you want to provoke, you should provoke someone who is stronger than you, otherwise you are misusing your power.

05. If anyone would like to hit me, they are perfectly welcome. I must warn you, though, that I might enjoy it. So maybe it’s not the right kind of punishment.

06. Perhaps the only difference between me and other people is that Ive always demanded more from the sunset.

07. I think that sexuality is the part of human beings that is closest to nature. And nature is dangerous somehow, yes, if you put nature against civilisation, nature is definitely a threat.

08. I think that limitations are the most important part of any art form

09. The secret ingredient to sex is love.

10. One of the things that got me thinking during therapy is that they say that fear is only thoughts, and nothing will happen because thoughts will never be real. And my thesis, or joke, in film Antichrist, is that they really do become real.

11. If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.

12. I am a man of very many anxieties but doing strange things with the camera is not one of them.

13. A film has to be like a stone in the shoe.

14. I am crazy about my own films. The films I’ve just made I’m crazy about them. But then I don’t see them for many years. It’s like when you get a new child you’re very crazy about this child but then after a few years you’re like, “what was its name again?”

15. Far be it from me to force anyone into either chess or dressage, but if you choose to do so yourself, in my opinion there is only one way: follow the rules.

16. I think it’s important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.

17. More than anything, there are more images in evil. Evil is based far more on the visual, whereas good has no good images at all.

18. Basically, I’m afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.

19. I am the best film director in the world.

20. I think working with actors is a little bit how a chef would work with a potato or a piece of meat. You have to kind of have a look at the potato or the piece of meat and see what kind of possibilities are in the ingredient. I know I’m using the wrong metaphor. I think my job is to see what potato is there and from there, just work under their conditions.

21. It’s the opening of Manderlay in Cannes, and I’m sitting next to this guy who’s writing for a tiny fictitious French paper called ‘On the Sunny Side,’ and he’s writing a review on the film, and he’s obviously bored. Then he tells me about all the cars he owns, and how rich he is, and all these things… So, at a certain point, he says, “So what do you do?” Then I take out this very strange hammer we have in the Danish building business, and I say, “I kill.” And then I kill him. It is as stupid as it sounds.

22. I think its a very strange question that I have to defend myself. I don’t feel that. You are all my guests, it’s not the other way around, that’s how I feel.

23. Evil gives you far more strings to pull. But I must say that I have never been interested in the psychology of evil, not in the slightest. Perhaps I’m not interested in evil, but in the dark sides of human beings.

24. I am a man who likes to control things, and if I can’t control them totally I will not control them at all.

25. Unfortunately, on one or both of my shoulders sits lots of anxiety and that is a controlling factor in my life.

26. I like gardening. I’m really a nature man. I spend as much time as I can in nature. I feel really safe there.

27. The cognitive therapy that takes place in the film Antichrist is a form of therapy that I have used for some time, and it has to do with confronting your fears. I would say that especially the part of the film that has to do with therapy is humoristic because people who know about this form of therapy would know that the character is more than a fool.

28. When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music.

29. I’m fighting against my will to control. I think that is what I am doing. I would like to accept things in life, in all matters of life I would like to accept, but it’s so difficult. I think we all have this struggle.

30. I’m very proud of being persona non grata. I’ve never been that before in my life, and that suits me extremely wellI’m known for provocations, but I like provocations when they have a purpose. And this had no purpose whatsoever. Because I’m not Mel Gibson. I’m definitely not Mel Gibson.

31. I know that I cannot be with a person for three hours without saying at least ten things that would kill me.

32. If there are some people that like the film and some people that do not, that’s fine for me, because I do not intend to make very broad films.

33. Political correctness kills discussion.

34. When I was in film school, it was said that all good films were characterised by some form of humour.

35. My films generally center around thousands of pictures being flashed in rapid succession to create the illusion of motion.

36. I had a lot of frustrations, and I was drinking far too much, and I was just trying to survive and this is what came out of it.

37. It is more difficult to manipulate with film than, for instance, video. The problem with video is that it gives you a thousand possibilities.

38. I come from a family of communist nudists. I was allowed to do or not do what I liked. My parents were not interested in whether I went to school or got drunk on white wine.

39. I understand Hitler… I sympathise with him a little bit.

40. I grew up in a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden.

41. It’s always been a lie that it’s difficult to make films.

42. I encouraged the cast to make up their own lines.

43. When I show a film at a festival, I am showing myself. Everything is at stake for me.

44. I always do something that I’ve never done before…

45. I am crazy about time cuts. I have a theory that the audience tie everything together so they don’t see time cuts but the time cuts give us the possibility of jumping in time, which means a psychological evolution can be cut down.

46. That’s the great thing about entering a convent: There are things that you simply can’t do, so you don’t have to worry about them

47. I would say that I am a poor Christian; I’m not a believer. It was this idea very early in my life that life on Earth, nature or man could not be a creation of a merciful God.

48. I’m not a woman! Let’s make that very clear! Oh I don’t know, maybe I am. I am an American woman. Or 65 percent of me is.

49. I hope my films will never completely be without the ability to mark anybody.

50. If people do not laugh it’s not comedy.

51. The risk is that you furnish the project with new suggestions to try and freshen it up; it’s not always beneficial. You risk betraying the original intention with the story, forgetting what it is you really want to portray.

52. I am not very tough with raising my children, but you can argue that to be more tough will help your children.

53. I did a lot of strange things. But I am a bad Catholic that’s for sure. Although I think it’s difficult to believe in evil.

54. You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance

55. Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can’t beat them, and if you can’t beat them, join them, as they say. As I’ve got older I’ve become very interested in that part of the work

56. You know, I really do have some morals. I do actually care about people. And I do have a political standpoint.

57. We start with a rehearsal where the actors kind of bring what they think should be in the scene. But we film everything, and we use cuts of this first take, also.

58. Even if you feel all right, tell the actors you don’t have full power, and they will help you.

59. Just the fact that you’re working is good for you.

60. I can’t tell you why I choose stuff, it’s really something I don’t analyse. The only thing I can say is that a film has to demand to be made, I don’t have a plan of what films I’m going to make. The only thing that I know now is that I’m not too crazy about doing things again that I’ve been into before.

61. I am very romantic about communism even still, but I know terrible things happened.

62. There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug-addicts. Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stones without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin?

63. I’m having a vacation and it’s so beautiful and maybe I’ll never get another film idea in my life.

64. I had an almost fetishistic attraction to film technology.

65. If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I’ve left behind me.