I always say I have a Danish passport, but I am a New Yorker at heart.

Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires.

I don't believe that art makes people violent in any way. I don't. But I do believe art can show people how to be violent and that's much more dangerous in a way.

I think that I am a pornographer, meaning that I make movies based on what excites me and what I would like to see.

The artificial world that we create through images will essentially become real.

Cinema is mass media, it is both overtly gross and exciting. It is our great mirror of society.

Creativity is narcissism. Creativity is falling in love with one's self as you create. It's self-indulgent.

In a way, art is a great way to release your love, fantasy, and desires. It's like a fetish. It's a comfortable way of excising a lot of your conscience.

Look at the birth of anything; it's always more violent than anything you could ever imagine.

We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.

Understanding one's own power is more interesting than someone being given something powerful.

Just like you can’t punish anyone without punishing yourself, you can’t love anyone without loving yourself.

It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home.

If I died tomorrow, I would be a happy girl.

The really happy man never laughs - seldom - though he may smile. He does not need to laugh, for laughter, like weeping is a relief of mental tension - and the happy are not over strung.

The Jew is contrary to our being. ... He desecrated our people, spit on our ideals, paralyzed the strength of the nation, made our customs rotten, and polluted the morale.

I may be strong-minded, but no one can say I'm out of my sphere now, for woman's special mission is supposed to be drying tears and bearing burdens

Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character.

If we get the good that belongs to us here and now, we must extract the sweetness of each passing minute while it is ours. That is the real art of living in the today.

Everyone thinks their baby is a genius. People find it delightfully refreshing when I tell them, My baby? Totally average. Like, 100 percent average.

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.