Creativity is about a reaction.

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.

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.

You cannot go through life without cause and effect.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I'd love to do a yakuza movie.

All my films represent my own needs and wants.

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

I would love to make a romantic comedy.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 think 'Videodrome' was an absolute philosophical masterpiece.

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.