Susanne Bier quotes:

I am very close to my family, and there's something life-affirming about that. Even if you feel completely different from them and have totally different views on politics and ethics, you're still family and have that immediate acceptance.

My mother has had breast cancer twice. And my mother has always been this very positive human being: a glass-half-full type. Like, when she was in treatment and feeling really bad, she would always talk about some nurse that was particularly nice to her.

I think that being Jewish has generated an extremely strong sense of the importance of family. If I look at my Scandinavian colleagues, they don't have that urgency about family. All my movies are about that.

Parents can shape a child, but a great teacher can, too.

If my daughter's going to go out in the winter with summer clothes, I'm gonna question it. And at some point, I assume, if the conversation goes on long enough, if I can convince her, she will put on some warm clothes. And I think that sort of exchange is pretty valid.

I never have particular actors planned when I'm in the process of writing.

At some stage in most people's lives, things turn upside down, and nothing is as you expected it to be.

Anders Thomas Jensen and I had talked about making a movie which addressed the cancer issue, and we didn't want to make it heavy-handed. We wanted to do something which had a lot of hope in it. And then for some reason we came up with a romantic comedy.

There were 10 or 15 years where all the Scandinavian movies were gray and light brown. I got really bored with it. I really felt that movies had to have that life of vivid colors.

You don't have to go very far away from Scandinavia to realize what an idyllic society it is.

A significant number of women who have been ill or had marital issues feel they have no value, and society is so keen on telling us that's the case.

Dogme is like leading a religious life, in that you are freeing yourself from making certain choices. It makes life easier.

I think the good thing about Dogme is that it forces you into an extreme sense of reality because there's no artificial light and no set design and all of those icings on the cake that you usually have on a movie.

I think it's extremely difficult consistently being a decent human being.

People don't necessarily do evil deeds because they want to; people happen to do something with horrible consequences even if they meant to be kind.

Denmark is like a big family of people.

Having done a Dogme film taught me the beauty of simplicity and austerity.

I believe in rules. I believe in artistic limitations, and I always have. I've always thought that setting out a set of rules before you start, and then being completely consistent with them, is the only way to make a really good film.

I have this almost obsessive desire to whomever is close to me: I want to have a very intense, close, intimate relationship with them.

Any creative process is about being in a territory which isn't secure, isn't necessarily familiar, and isn't convenient in any sort of way. And that's the excitement of it.

As a filmmaker, I always try not to concern myself with the outcome of things. I make the movie, and I do that as honestly and good as I can. I don't want to pollute my thoughts with what is going to happen with it afterwards, because I have to work inside-out.

My favorite hobby is matchmaking. It's a lot easier to do it in movies then in real life because in real life, people don't do what I tell them to do.

I've always been slightly hesitant about generalizing movies made by men and women being different in their nature; I think movies by each director are different. Having said that, I think that it's kind of disgraceful that there aren't more female directors.

I don't want actors to be writers. I think it's too much responsibility.

I hate when the sun is high and there are no shadows. If I could do super high-budget movies, I would only shoot when the sun starts to get low - but you can't just shoot for four hours every day.

When I watch a movie myself, I want to forget that I'm watching a movie, and I want to be inside the movie. That's the kind of experience I want my audience to have.

If you look at children's stories in fairy tales, they're pretty brutal.

I don't do a lot of rehearsal. I don't like rehearsals. I rehearse the day or morning. I spend one hour and a half with all the actors, and we go over the scenes, and we change it and change the dialogue, and we do a lot of things to it, but prior to shooting, I don't really rehearse.

I generally edit quite heavily. In general, there aren't many scenes that are sitting where they sat in the script in the final form.

I don't feel I have an issue with listening or understanding English in any sort of way.

I think possibly, as an artist, you're always treated with a certain respect but also with a certain sort of nervousness.

For years, whenever I'd been travelling and came back to Copenhagen, I'd think: 'People are so stylish.' And it's not any one class. It's everyday life.

A lot of people who live in Denmark will understand Danish but not necessarily speak it.

I don't feel that I'm strictly Danish; I don't feel that my sense of humor is strictly Danish or my human sensibility is strictly Danish.

I think the lack of automatically feeling, 'Yes, the future is going to be like the present' - that is very much a Jewish thing.

I guess I strongly feel that we cannot pretend that the Third World is not part of our world. We cannot say 'OK, there's that problem over there, let's just close our eyes' - we cannot do that.

I'm extremely straightforward. And I can't do that sort of traditional girl thing of saying one thing that actually means something else. I never understood it, and I still don't understand it.

In a way, our family is our modern identity.

There are certain things you cannot accept. There are certain things that human beings cannot tolerate.

I have a slight controversy with the Dogme brethren because I've been saying that rules are to be interpreted; not that I haven't followed the rules, because I don't see the point of submitting yourself to a set of rules if you don't follow them. But having said that, it is always a lot of interpretation.

Oftentimes, reality is much worse than what you can put in a movie.

I think it is kind of depressing how few female filmmakers there are. I think it is in general depressing how few women there are in ... important positions in society

I think there's a misconception of my wanting to do dark stuff.

There are good and bad movies, and long ones, and pretentious ones, and fun ones, and it's kind of healthy not just being able to switch off after ten minutes, but have patience.