Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes

"The way I work, and the material we work with, I think if you analyze too much and have too many specific ideas, it just becomes a little bit too superficial, and then performances might become too self-conscious and project relatively narrow things."

"Something that's a hilarious comedy, for someone else might be a drama."

"Starting in Greece, you couldn't really say, 'I'm going to become a film-maker.' A 15-year-old boy in Greece in the '80s and '90s? There was nothing like that happening."

"I think I do things that are more common in theatre."

"I don't have time to read much. I'm trying to read 'The Brothers Karamazov' again, for a year now - I keep getting halfway, and then there's a lot of work, and I forget it, and I have to go back to the beginning."

"I just try and decide what I'm interested in and what excites me. I don't worry about how it's going to be perceived."

"I never thought that I would ever actually get to make films. Being from Greece, it wasn't really a reality."

"I did have a lot of years watching and appreciating dance and theater and all of those kind of things, and it has informed the way that I work with actors and the way I approach things."

"It's hard for me to find a script that's perfectly suited to me, so even if it's a good script, I'll still have to work on it with someone and shape it, making it the film that I want to make. So in that respect, I prefer to do the stuff that I've generated anyway."

"Having rules means that sometimes people break them, and that means punishment."

"I wasn't a film buff."

"I've played around with the notion of making a series on the premise of 'Alps' because it's one of the films no one saw."

"I either enjoy things or not. And things either make me think, or they don't. Or they mess with me, and I feel awkward."

"As an audience member myself, I love to be in a position where I'm trying to figure out what I am supposed to feel or if what I'm feeling is appropriate or not."

"I wouldn't know what to say about something that worked in a perfect way, so I guess, in everything, I try to find what doesn't work and expose it and then see how it relates to people and their stories and their character."

"I am calm but on the outside, mostly. When I'm on a film set, the stress is so humongous that I'm dying inside - I'm extremely stressed, but I do try, and... well, I don't try. I think it's my natural reaction to not externalize things."

"I never think about it much, the visual aspect of it, until we start making the movie. I don't really think about it when we write. When we finish, and I start putting the film together, and we pick the locations, I do think about that a lot."

"'The Lobster' is very particular, and we did need to create a very specific world with specific rules so the whole premise would work."

"All the talented and smart actors, they get it: as soon as it comes out of their mouth, they know if it's right or wrong. If the writing has a particular voice, they get it, and they can hit it."

"For some reason, I guess, people wanted me to prove myself in English-language films."

"I always expect people to be torn when they see one of my films and divided in some way."

"I wouldn't be making films if I just wanted to express some specific ideas; then I would be writing essays or something."

"I just think it's interesting to start a dialogue."

"Sometimes people say things and don't really know what they mean by what they're saying. Subconsciously, it might mean something different."