“The funnier it is in the beginning of a story, the more dramatic it can become. Because when an audience is laughing, that's opening their souls somehow, and when you have an audience with an open soul, it's much better to hit them with a knife.”
“Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can’t celebrate humanity but I’m not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.”
“Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things that we get, but not the things we wish we had.”
“I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.”
“I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are. ”