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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.