Film works when a director and a star have a connection. You know, when there's something telekinetic between them, there's a partnership, it's like alter egos. It's like James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock, or Fellini and Mastroianni. I'm not comparing, I'm just saying, if you can come into a relationship where the director and star have such a bond, it's so much easier to make a movie.

I feel that silence is the greatest word, ever. When you don't talk, people begin to read things into you or you become what they long for. When you don't talk, you almost become the mirror image of the other person.

I just close my eyes and I fantasize what I would like to see.

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.

We live in a world where art is always looked upon as the perfect medium. We live in a society where we can alter our body parts, we can act in the most perfect or right way. A lot of that is dangerous because, especially in the world of art, the chief enemy of creativity is being safe. If you're safe, you can't fall and hurt yourself. The older you are, the further down the crash is going to be. But if it works out, the higher the high.

In "Drive," there's a heightened male edge. In "Only God Forgives," it was almost crawling back into the womb of the mother. And now with "The Neon Demon," being reborn as a 16-year-old girl.

I like the early comic book characters more than the new ones.