It’s harder to write a story with just two people in a room than with 50 characters.

To be perfectly honest, I think that as I'm growing older, I'm just growing more impatient. I'll be very happy if at some point people say, 'Michael's grown wiser and softer in his old age.' But we'll have to wait and see what my next project is.

On the set I make jokes I can't get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light.

I never suffered from the absence of a father. On the contrary, as a child I was more inclined to see men as a disturbing factor. It made things difficult for me when I started working as a director.

I think that religion is an integral part of human needs, but the question also is how you understand religion.

It became a gamble to myself whether I was able to do the exact same film ["Funny Games"]under very different circumstances.

In my film "Benny's Video," I depicted violence but I failed to say all that I had to say, so I wanted to continue the dialog and that's why I did "Funny Games." The irony is that after I shot "Funny Games," but it hadn't been released at all anywhere.