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.
Lars von Trier

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.
Lars von Trier

I always do something that I've never done before.
Lars von Trier

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

I had an almost fetishistic attraction to film technology.
Lars von Trier

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.
Lars von Trier

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.
Lars von Trier

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.
Lars von Trier

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

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.
Lars von Trier


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

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

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.
Lars von Trier

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.
Lars von Trier

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.
Lars von Trier

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

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.
Lars von Trier

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