Lars Von Trier Quotes

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'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.

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

There is probably something good in every religion, the important thing is how you practice it. And this is when I found out that the most beautiful thing is to be able to live with a religion. Not just by displaying it and going to church and all, but by really being able to live some of these thoughts in your everyday life. This is a good thought. My problem right now is - and I just went to a Catholic service in connection with my daughter's something-or-another - and I got so damn annoyed by the fact that every text was about humility in relation to God. That's annoying, and I keep on being annoyed by it. Granted, the texts were written by people and not by God, but it's still so annoying. I don't see the meaning of you being humble just because you've been created by God and He has created all this. You can be humble toward life and toward other human beings and toward creativity and everything - and you are - but being humble toward the man who has created the whole circus? Of course, but you shouldn't have to prostrate yourself, and you do that in many religions - you crawl in the dust before these gods. Why? I can see why some king down here on earth might enjoy seeing people crawling before him, but if this guy is that great, then he shouldn't care whether I bow down before him or whether I play around with my dick at night - he shouldn't care a bit about anything like that. As long as I don't do anything that will harm his creation, as long as I don't kill, say, too

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 am the best film director in the world.

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 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 always do something that I've never done before.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

You can't do much in this world without hurting someone else. Every time you take a breath it's to the disadvantage of someone or something. And then you have to decide how and in which way you will hurt others. And I find it quite agreeable trying not to hurt anyone, but I have made this decision about the fish. It's a pity about them, but also, if I pull up a fish, then it makes space for another fish who will be so happy to get more space. And he will become a very happy little fish. You can rationalize it in a number of different ways - maybe the fish I pull up is depressed and wants to end his life, but he hasn't really been able to do it. It's not easy if you're a fish. I wouldn't know what a big salmon who's really tired of it all would do.

Every word removed from the language is another brick removed from the wall of democracy.

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?

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

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

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

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

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 I've always demanded more from the sunset. More spectacular colors when the sun hit the horizon. That's perhaps my only sin.

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

A film should be like a rock in the shoe.

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.

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

True values entail suffering. That's the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don't think that's completely real, do we? ... Longing is true. It may be that there's no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It's part of our reality.

Grace paused. And while she did, the clouds scattered and let the moonlight through, and Dogville underwent another of those little changes of light.
lt was as if the light, previously so merciful and faint, finally refused to cover up for the town any longer.
Suddenly you could no longer imagine a berry that would appear one day on a gooseberry bush, but only see the thorn that was there right now.
The light now penetrated every unevenness and flaw in the buildings...
and in... the people!
And all of a sudden she knew the answer to her question all too well.
lf she had acted like them she could not have defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned them harshly enough.
lt was as if her sorrow and pain had finally assumed their rightful place.
No. What they had done was not good enough. And if one had the power to put it to rights,
it was one's duty to do so.
For the sake of the other towns.
For the sake of humanity.
And not least for the sake of the human being that was Grace herself.

The secret ingredient to sex is love.

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 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.

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

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

Nature is Satan's church.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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