Awards movies are normally sort of... life-affirming and noble. It's probably too much of an intellectual conceit and, you know, people don't like it when you don't lead the bad guy off in cuffs.

For me, the scariest thing about a serial killer is that there's somebody who lives next door to you, running power tools late into the night, and you don't know he has a refrigerator full of penises.

I was always interested in films that scar.

You can’t take everything on. That’s why when people ask how does this film fit into my oeuvre. I say 'I don’t know. I don’t think in those terms’. If I did, I might become incapacitated by fear . . . How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.

When I'm watching somebody act, it's a behavior editorial function - I look at someone act, and I might say, 'I don't believe him when he says that.' I don't know why I don't believe him, probably because the people that I've met, they don't act like that when they say stuff like that and mean it.

Perfume is pretty good because nobody has to hold the product by their face or use it.

You have a responsibility for the way you make the audience feel, and I want them to feel uncomfortable.