Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes

I believe in allowing an audience the opportunity to make up their own mind.

I'm gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they're gonna like. It doesn't really matter.

People have different interpretations of my work, and I like that flexibility and openness.

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.

I've always been very liberal when it comes to people thinking for themselves.

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

I don't use 'always do this,' 'never say that' and I never give advice because I'm not the end-all, be-all authority.

I was always free because I felt free. It's very important to be free inside. The most important thing is to feel free.

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

It's always a good idea to let the audience make up their own minds.

The most important thing to do in your life, is to not interfere with somebody else's life

The most important thing today is for young people to take responsibility, to actually know how to formulate an idea and how to work on it. Not to buy into the so-called apprenticeship.

I want there to be hints of narrative everywhere in the image so that people can make up their own stories about them. But I don't want to have my own narrative and force it on to them.

I believe that people should be able to question things.

Being liberated means reading what you want to read, and fantasizing about what you want to fantasize about.

I really think it's important that my beliefs don't impinge upon what you get from the movie. It's your opinion that matters and it's far more interesting than mine.

I hate the idea of always having to interpret other people's ideas and thoughts and words, because I'm very independent and, I guess, a free thinker.

I don't really think in absolutes.

There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently.

It's empowering to be asked to look at what's possible, not told how to do it.

In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it, to open doors, sometimes, not even closing the book -- leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity.

I'm fortunate to have an amazing, strong mother who is so supportive of everything me and my sisters did growing up - but she was someone who never forced us to go swim or to go do this or that. She helped us think about certain consequences when we needed to, but we made our own decisions. I think if I were forced to swim, I wouldn't have stayed in the pool as long as I did.