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.

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.

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.

So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.

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

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

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