Susanne Bier

“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.”

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

“For me, grief is a static thing, and my movies have an extremely dynamic sort of movement.”

“In reality most people aren't as perfect as they want to seem.”

“The main thing as a director, you always want to have a bit of a worry about the material you're going to get yourself into. You want to be a bit scared of it so that you have that excitement of having to climb the mountain.”

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

“The foundations of our lives are far more fragile than we think. So we are severely shaken when life turns out to have a will of its own.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“If I go home from a day of shooting, and I haven't at some point felt the magic, I'm really frustrated.”

“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.”

“None of my movies are autobiographical.”

“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 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.”

“We always want to find good and bad guys, and I don't believe in that.”

“I'm a huge fan of Richard Curtis - there's real grief, real compassion in his films as well as cheekiness; it's a wonderful cocktail.”

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

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

“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.”