Lars von Trier quotes:

When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music.

Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.

I'm happy that I'm alive. I feel like someone coming back from Vietnam, you know; I'm sure that later on I'll start killing people in a square somewhere, but right now, I just feel happy to be alive.

I would say that I am a poor Christian; I'm not a believer. It was this idea very early in my life that life on Earth, nature or man could not be a creation of a merciful God.

I am the best film director in the world.

Far be it from me to force anyone into either chess or dressage, but if you choose to do so yourself, in my opinion there is only one way: follow the rules.

I grew up in a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden.

I sit there pouring out my woes year after year, coming up with one enormity after another about my mother and the way she let me down; but it doesn't make me any the less fearful.

If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.

If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.

Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.

More than anything, there are more images in evil. Evil is based far more on the visual, whereas good has no good images at all.

Nature is Satan's church.

Political correctness kills discussion.

If you want to provoke, you should provoke someone who is stronger than you, otherwise you are misusing your power.

I am crazy about time cuts. I have a theory that the audience tie everything together so they don't see time cuts but the time cuts give us the possibility of jumping in time, which means a psychological evolution can be cut down.

I know that I cannot be with a person for three hours without saying at least ten things that would kill me.

I'm having a vacation, and it's so beautiful, and maybe I'll never get another film idea in my life.

That's the great thing about entering a convent: There are things that you simply can't do, so you don't have to worry about them.

When I show a film at a festival, I am showing myself. Everything is at stake for me.

A film has to be like a stone in the shoe.

A film should be like a rock in the shoe.

I am not very tough with raising my children, but you can argue that to be more tough will help your children.

You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance.

I am crazy about my own films. The films I've just made I'm crazy about them. But then I don't see them for many years. It's like when you get a new child you're very crazy about this child but then after a few years you're like, "what was its name again?"

My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it's a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it's a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.

When I was in film school, it was said that all good films were characterised by some form of humour.

You know, I really do have some morals. I do actually care about people. And I do have a political standpoint.

Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can't beat them, and if you can't beat them, join them, as they say. As I've got older I've become very interested in that part of the work.

I am very romantic about communism even still, but I know terrible things happened.

Evil gives you far more strings to pull. But I must say that I have never been interested in the psychology of evil, not in the slightest. Perhaps I'm not interested in evil, but in the dark sides of human beings.

I always do something that I've never done before.

I am a man of very many anxieties but doing strange things with the camera is not one of them.

I am a man who likes to control things, and if I can't control them totally I will not control them at all.

I come from a family of communist nudists. I was allowed to do or not do what I liked. My parents were not interested in whether I went to school or got drunk on white wine.

I did a lot of strange things. But I am a bad Catholic that's for sure. Although I think it's difficult to believe in evil.

I encouraged the cast to make up their own lines.

I had an almost fetishistic attraction to film technology.

I hope my films will never completely be without the ability to mark anybody.

I like gardening. I'm really a nature man. I spend as much time as I can in nature. I feel really safe there.

I think it's a very strange question that I have to defend myself. I don't feel that. You are all my guests, it's not the other way around, that's how I feel.

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 think that limitations are the most important part of any art form

I think working with actors is a little bit how a chef would work with a potato or a piece of meat. You have to kind of have a look at the potato or the piece of meat and see what kind of possibilities are in the ingredient. I know I'm using the wrong metaphor. I think my job is to see what potato is there and from there, just work under their conditions.

I understand Hitler... I sympathize with him a bit

If anyone would like to hit me, they are perfectly welcome. I must warn you, though, that I might enjoy it. So maybe it's not the right kind of punishment.

I'm fighting against my will to control. I think that is what I am doing. I would like to accept things in life, in all matters of life I would like to accept, but it's so difficult. I think we all have this struggle.

I'm not a woman! Let's make that very clear! Oh I don't know, maybe I am. I am an American woman. Or 65 percent of me is.

I'm very proud of being persona non grata. I've never been that before in my life, and that suits me extremely wellI'm known for provocations, but I like provocations when they have a purpose. And this had no purpose whatsoever. Because I'm not Mel Gibson. I'm definitely not Mel Gibson.

It is more difficult to manipulate with film than, for instance, video. The problem with video is that it gives you a thousand possibilities.

It's always been a lie that it's difficult to make films.

It's the opening of Manderlay in Cannes, and I'm sitting next to this guy who's writing for a tiny fictitious French paper called On the Sunny Side, and he's writing a review on the film, and he's obviously bored. Then he tells me about all the cars he owns, and how rich he is, and all these things. So, at a certain point, he says, "So what do you do?" Then I take out this very strange hammer we have in the Danish building business, and I say, "I kill." And then I kill him. It is as stupid as it sounds.

My films generally center around thousands of pictures being flashed in rapid succession to create the illusion of motion.

Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can't beat them, and if you can't beat them, join them, as they say. As I've got older I've become very interested in that part of the work

Perhaps the only difference between me and other people is that Ive always demanded more from the sunset,

That's the great thing about entering a convent: There are things that you simply can't do, so you don't have to worry about them

The risk is that you furnish the project with new suggestions to try and freshen it up; it's not always beneficial. You risk betraying the original intention with the story, forgetting what it is you really want to portray.

The secret ingredient to sex is love.

There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug-addicts. Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stones without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin?

Unfortunately, on one or both of my shoulders sits lots of anxiety and that is a controlling factor in my life.

You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance

Everything is going to hell, but we should smile all the way.

If people do not laugh it's not comedy.