Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires.
I feel that silence is the greatest word, ever. When you don't talk, people begin to read things into you or you become what they long for. When you don't talk, you almost become the mirror image of the other person.
There's incredible effect in being either loved or hated, but knowing that, either way, you have penetrated the mind and have altered it; that is a very pleasurable feeling.
I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I've heard or experienced or seen. And we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don't, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own.
Creativity is narcissism. Creativity is falling in love with one's self as you create. It's self-indulgent.
The act of creation can be an extreme violent experience.
I don't believe that art makes people violent in any way. I don't. But I do believe art can show people how to be violent and that's much more dangerous in a way.
I think that I am a pornographer, meaning that I make movies based on what excites me and what I would like to see.
Reaction is what changes your understanding of the world.
The artificial world that we create through images will essentially become real.
Cinema is mass media, it is both overtly gross and exciting. It is our great mirror of society.
I think that's the struggle of our normality is that we have oppressed desires because of what is accepted and not accepted in society.
Look at the birth of anything; it's always more violent than anything you could ever imagine.
I've been making films with almost no dialogue (laughs), so sound and music become a very powerful character to tell the story. It's almost like with sound and music and images, it's your tool to tell the story, especially when I decide to structure the film in a way that usually goes against the conventions of the three-act structure which most films are made out of.
The problem with cinema nowadays is that it's a math problem. People can read a film mathematically; they know when this comes or that comes; in about 30 minutes, it's going to be over and have an ending. So film has become a mathematical solution. And that is boring, because art is not mathematical.
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?"
I mean, what do you think creativity is? Nothing but self-indulgence. And the more self-indulgent it is, the more interesting it becomes. So I think that part of creativity is also falling in love with your own narcissism: accepting it, using it as an asset.
I woke up one day and I realized I wasn't born beautiful, but my wife was, so I decided to make a horror film about it: what it would be like to be born beautiful.
The power of art is as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; it's just where war destroys, art inspires. But in order to inspire, you need to react to it. And, if it doesn't penetrate your mind, you can't react to it.
We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.
I love fear, and fear breeds creativity. It forces you to react instinctively, which is the essence of movement. Movement is a creativity - a sense of an emotional movement. And the more instinctual you can make that, the more pleasurable it is. It's like an infant drawing. You're completely uninhibited because creativity is a wonderful expression. Good or bad, who cares? That's part of the past. The act of creativity is what's interesting.
I love films, I love movies, I love television, I love television series, I love the internet, I love anything that enhances images. But most of all, I love, love movies.
Understanding one's own power is more interesting than someone being given something powerful.
Love comes from the strangest places.
The idea of narcissism, essentially, is and will be accepted as a virtue.
