Maybe it's the music that enables them to function like that, to always take everything as it comes and never complain about the misery, hardship or injustice.

Before you say cut, wait 5 seconds

If anything, I see myself as a witness. I'd also be pleased, if you'd call me an interpreter. I try to hear and see the message of a place and pass it on, into that other language, the universal one of images.

The most important question for me when I begin working on a film is where to start. For a book, what makes you convinced there is a story that is worthwhile?

Whoever came up first with that saying a picture is worth a thousand words didn't understand the first thing about either one.

Pina Bausch's motto was "Dance, otherwise we are lost." She really meant it, that dance was her answer to life and to the troubles and to the problems that can arise. That was her way to deal with everything, to dance.

The reason I never wrote a novel is that I don't have what it takes to write characters, so they would all be talking differently. I lack that ability. If I were writing, they would all talk like me, and that's no good.