I hope to build a house with my films. Some of them are the cellar, some are the walls, and some are the windows. But I hope in time there will be a house.

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.

The more real things get, the more like myths they become.

Everyone must decide for himself whether it is better to have a brief but more intensely felt existence or to live a long and ordinary life.

Love is the best, most insidious, most effective instrument of social repression.

Yes, actually ever since I saw his films and tried to write about them, Sirk's been in everything I've done. Not Sirk himself, but what I've learned from his work.

For all of us it’s the things that won’t work that keep our interest.