I always feel that there's no violence in a movie - it's not real, it's a magic trick. Nobody is really dying. In fact, the people that die in my movies have gone on to become extremely successful!

I like movies that work on two levels - like The Simpsons, kids can watch it and adults can watch it. Teenagers can watch Hostel and if they want to see a blood and guts violent movie they're going to have a great time. They're going to scream and yell, it's a great date movie because they're going to squeeze their date and their date is probably going to be too scared to go home... so you take them home and put on Dirty Dancing and everybody wins.

I always say that no matter what the torture is, or the tool is, first of all it's nothing worse than what's been done already and that wasn't done by the church and the state for over a period of 250 years during the European witch trials.

I want people to see my name on a movie, pay money and know they're going to be entertained for 90 minutes.

Twitter is wonderful. You can kill rumours instantly.

Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.

'Hostel' is that's how I feel about what's going on in Iraq. There's people that just want money and people are being sacrificed for it.