Susanne Bier Quotes

However, I don't feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working - I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really.

I try to just make what I want to make or what I would want to see. I try not to think about the audience too much.

Mainly, I don't like it when music is made solely to impress people or in order to please business people; it doesn't sound good to me. If you're making music in order to become famous or loved by the masses... that's not what I'm about. When somebody's making music for the wrong reasons, I hear it right away.

The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.

To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be.

First and foremost, you have to make the movie for yourself. And that's not to say, to hell with everyone else, but what else have you got to go on but your own taste and judgment?

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

Whatever art form you're working in, it's crucial to see it clearly, to feel it clearly, and not to worry about the results, or how someone else will see it.

You can't plan for people to like your movies. I knew that people were not going to run in droves to the theater for the 'In the Valley of Elah.' I knew they might not want to see it, but I still had to the movie; I felt very strongly about it. Wanting to keep telling a good story is what you want to do, a compelling story.

If people like something you've done - or don't like it - this shouldn't determine what you write or how you write it. Those are two separate things entirely: your work and the world's response to it.

I was always a bit concerned about purity of essence. I never wanted a job that might affect the way I wrote or thought.

I don't read the reviews because it somewhere affects my work. If some critic doesn't like a movie, I can't keep his criticisms in mind the next time I am making a film. Even if someone writes a great review about my film, I don't want to be affected by it.

I make movies that I enjoy making and tell stories that I want to see, so it’s hard. You never reverse engineer those things and go, “What would appeal to this or that?” Even if I tried, I don’t know. I’m an all-American kid.

I make a film like I cook for friends. I hope they like it, but if they don't, I'm prepared to enjoy it all by myself.

I work really hard on the shows and I think the shows speak for themselves. I don't want to construct the show to prove something.

You have to remain strong. That's the kind of filmmaker I want to encourage. Orson Welles was the one who said, you know, you can learn anything you need to know about filmmaking- that's camera, sound, celluloid, video at this point- in four hours. It has nothing to do with anything. It has nothing to do with it... It has to do with what you want to say. If you feel you have something to say, you'll find that way to get it said, on film, and not let anyone or anything chip away at that or tarnish it, because it's something special and precious.

If I can't make the kind of film that I want to make, then the hell with it.

I practice the artist's golden rule. I wouldn't want somebody telling me how to finish my painting, I'm not going to tell him how to finish his movie or how to shape his movie.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

It was more freedom than I think most people get when they're starting out - or even when they're not starting out. He [John Cassavetes] did his thing and I did whatever I thought.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

You never know how a film will play, whether it will be successful or not, or whether it will touch the audience. I always said to myself that whatever happens, big audience or small, that I would not let the results have an impact on my way of working. But it would be a bit silly for me to change my methods when I have a big success. That means my methods work well.

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.

I stand by the Lost finale. It's the story that we wanted to tell, and we told it. No excuses. No apologies. I look back on it as fondly as I look back on the process of writing the whole show. And while I'll always care what you think, I can't be a slave to it anymore. Here's why: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … I was alive.

... you should wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content. By the time you have gone through twenty drafts, the characters may have developed lives of their own, completely separate from the people you based them on in the beginning. And even if someone, at some time, gets upset with your words - so what? Live your life, sing your song. Anyone who loves you will want you to have that.