Father-daughter has a lot of layers, I find.

You can change so many things in your life, but you cannot change where you come from. It's something that you have to deal with: the role everybody plays in his family, no matter if he likes it or not.

I had the feeling I had to stay focused on what's lying under. A big part of the story in Toni Erdmann happens on the sub-level. On the surface, a lot of scenes, it's banal. If the actor starts thinking, "Oh, I'm in a genre, I'm doing a comedy, I'm doing funny things," then you lose.

Politically, the world economy really depends on consultants. Because it's also, in a way, an outsourcing of responsibility. They can say, "Yeah, they told us to do that," and the consultant says, "Yeah, but I'm just a consultant," and nobody's responsible anymore.

With every enemy, when you get closer you understand much more, or the picture dissolves.

A family is something very static and hard to escape, so everybody has a certain role over the years, no matter if you like it or not.

When you direct the dialogue you can be precise, but with a song as a director you're more like a football coach. You can say one, two things in the beginning and then the actor has to follow what happens.