“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.”
“I've always felt more politically comfortable making films that demonstrated problems and didn't tell you how to solve them, but made you feel enough for the subjects who were hurt by these problems...”
“[On Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this would, among other things, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence, but still keep its dreamy quality.”
“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.”
“Perhaps it makes sense that a woman whose earliest memory was on the set of Apocalypse Now would grow up to direct a dark fable about five adolescent girls who unapologetically and unceremoniously kill themselves...”
“What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.”