I think everybody's looking for religion to believe in. I think we all need faith.

Where war destroys, art inspires. And in order to inspire, you need to penetrate the brain. In order to penetrate the brain, you need something to react to. To have something to react to, you need to get your emotions up and running. To get your emotions up and running, you need to have something that ... whatever direction you go in, it has to be a movement between you and the experience.

I don't drive because I failed eight times and never got my license.

I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I've heard or experienced or seen. And we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don't, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own.

The future is not about what you do, it's about what you stand for.

We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.

The first person I ever described the film [The Neon Demon] to was Christina Hendricks [who has a cameo in the movie]. We were having dinner in LA and she asked me what I wanted to do next and I said, "I want to do a horror movie." And she goes, "What's it going to be about?" And I said, "A lot of blood and high heels."