Sex is the invention of a very clever venereal disease.

The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It's not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff.

For me, it's just a normal artistic endeavour to explore the dark side. Certainly, I'm not alone in it. Artists generally don't like to accept the version of reality that society and culture hand them. They want to know what's really going on. So you're always looking in the ceilings, under the floorboards and behind the walls, trying to find the mechanisms, the structures, and the truth. I find that often leads you into some dark places.

For example I don't work with William Hurt the same way that I will work with Viggo. They're different guys and they work in different ways. So a good sensitive director has his general style and technique and personality that he uses but you don't impose that on the actors.

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally.

I'm very anti-religious because religion tends to disembody you.