I know how terrifying L.A. can be, because I've been there as a failure. After 'Drive,' it was the most marvellous place in the universe.

America has no one to catch you when you fall. That makes you want to achieve. It is healthy for the soul. But all that is valued is success.

Beauty is like a new class system. The world is so obsessed with beauty; it has been for the last 2,000 years. It's the one stock that's never gone down, the one stock that's never gone out of fashion.

I like extremes.

The greatest artists were in a situation where they had to pay their bills. That's a very convenient way to get very creative very fast.

I'm not a guy's guy. I always loved girl things. I loved dolls. I loved dressing up and much more.

There are wonderful artists who deal in the fashion world only, and you see by their creations that they are changing our understanding of sexuality and freedom and gender-bending.

The most creative phase of a film is in shooting, because structure is the defining element of that phase.

We live in a time where it's very much in vogue, constant search for pure utopian equality, and which, on one level, is quite amusingly silly but also on another probably very important.

When I was 20 years old, my uncle was an arthouse distributor, and he would take me to Cannes every year to work as a film scout.

I started making films purely based on what I would like to see.

I always approach every film I make as if it was going to be the last. So if I'm going to go out, I'm going out with a bang.

Whenever I make a movie, I always try to figure out what kind of music it would be.

I'm not the greatest filmmaker. There are a lot of better filmmakers than me.

Coming to Hollywood, you always hear the horror stories, but I had good people around me who maybe didn't understand what I was doing but always protected me.

The first thing I do when I go to people's houses is look at their television, turn it on.

I like all kinds of film.

Every film that you make has to have a scene that is the heart that blood flows through in every other scene. That scene doesn't always have to be in the beginning of the film. But it can also be at the end, or in the middle, and that can sometimes make the film more effective.

I've always felt that I was from the future because the future is really not about what you make but what you stand for.

I think 'Videodrome' was an absolute philosophical masterpiece.

Art has the power to influence and to make you react to something that you normally wouldn't concern, worry, or even think about or wouldn't want to talk about.

I'm calculated in other things, but not in what I make.

People react to 'Drive' in a way that is very primal.

Creativity is about taking what is the norm and expanding it and continuing to expand it and expand it and expand it and expand it.

Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying.

L.A. films are hard to define compared to New York films because New York films are their own subgenre, in a way. L.A. is more transparent.

I would love to make a kids' movie. But they are very hard to make.

I would love to make a romantic comedy.

For me, the greatest pleasure is when you make something, and everyone argues about it.

All my films represent my own needs and wants.

I'd love to do a yakuza movie.

The best way to move forward - to bury the past. That doesn't mean you forget it.

I started buying films a couple of years ago. The first film-maker I began to obsessively collect was Andy Milligan. He was a New York frustrated artist.

Television is dead. And television will not be reborn. It will not come back.

People need to express themselves. The more you do that, the better a person you become.

People have called me everything. Every word in the dictionary I've been called at one point or another.

Denmark is like a Sylvanian world, but one thing it breeds is malady. The malady is generally in good taste. Opinions are correct. That is the chief enemy of creativity.

The only thing that would really make my mother angry would be if I liked horror movies or violence or Ronald Reagan. And very violent films were a way for me to rebel. You have to rebel against your parents.

You cannot go through life without cause and effect.

I'm a huge John Hughes fan, and I grew up in the '80s, when his films came out. So, my introduction to what you'd call 'cinema love,' that illusion of love, was 'Sixteen Candles' and Molly Ringwald.

I've always worked a lot with silence in my films. It forces the audience to concentrate on what they're seeing, because silence is pure emotions. It has no logic; it goes straight to the heart.

Creativity is about a reaction.

Polarizing is the greatest achievement in any art form, even in cinema.

I thought it would be interesting to try something in Hollywood after a movie like 'Valhalla Rising,' which I was really pleased with, personally.

My writing has always been more out of the need to write a movie rather than me being a good writer.

I'm not a walking encyclopedia. I'm not one of those types that knows every single film ever made or can recite every dialog.

I love watching the superhero movies, and I would love to make one. But in a way, 'Drive' is probably the greatest superhero movie ever made.

With 'Only God Forgives,' what's great about that movie is it just freaked so many people out.

I love to be on location. I love to be in other parts of the world. I love to be where I'm reminded about real, you know, emotions. I love to touch things and design things, and I think that, for the actor, it certainly - it certainly helps their performance.

I'm not a knowledgeable comic fanatic, as a lot of other people are.