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

Since I'm not a second Marx or Freud who can offer people alternatives, I have to let them keep their own wrong feelings. And I don't believe that melodramatic feelings are laughable-they should be taken absolutely seriously.

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

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.

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.

Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It's a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other.

I detest the idea that love between two persons can lead to salvation. All my life I have fought against this oppressive type of relationship. Instead, I believe in searching for a kind of love that somehow involves all of humanity.