A film should be like a rock in the shoe.
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.
Everything is going to hell, but we should smile all the way.
If you want to provoke, you should provoke someone who is stronger than you, otherwise you are misusing your power.
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.
Perhaps the only difference between me and other people is that Ive always demanded more from the sunset.
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.
I think that limitations are the most important part of any art form
The secret ingredient to sex is love.
A film has to be like a stone in the shoe.
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.
If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.
I am a man of very many anxieties but doing strange things with the camera is not one of them.
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.
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?"
Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.
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.
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.
I am the best film director in the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, on one or both of my shoulders sits lots of anxiety and that is a controlling factor in my life.