The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

In the last analysis, terrorism is an idea generated by capitalism to justify better defense measures to safeguard capitalism.

Better a street-sweeper in Mexico than a filmmaker in Germany!

People are terrible. They can bear anything. Anything! People are hard and brutal. And everyone is disposable. Everyone! That's the lesson.

It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful... it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.

As long as movies are depressing, life isn't.

Women think in Sirk's films. Something which has never struck me with other directors. None of them. Usually women are always reacting, doing what women are supposed to do, but in Sirk they think. It's something that has to be seen.