Many of the comedies I had made in Sweden were slightly based on semi-autobiographical experiences, so adapting novels was a very different experience.

A film that is bleached tends to have a more realistic quality.

I am always more interested in performance and character depiction, and my direction says as much.

But I notice that there is a lack of darkness in my movies and I don't know where that comes from.

I was always attracted by the European way of life, but I am deeply Swedish.

Cinema has become a global economy, totally international.

I always try to preserve my cinematographic style, even while I work in the US. I wish to always be European.

I made all their videos, apart from the last two, so if you ever see an Abba video on TV then it's my stuff.

But now I wish I could back to Stockholm to make international films there.

I love mixing amateurs and professionals.

I love improvising.

I always need a couple of highlights to really spark the passion for a project.

I can't go back and label myself as an outcast because I was a pretty well-adjusted kid, but I can certainly relate to the feeling of being an outsider.

Kevin, as the whole cast is, just wonderful people and great people, and people who are attracted to this kind of material and accepting the idea of going to Newfoundland and knowing the kind of lack of amenities.

ABBA: The Movie; I got a lot of grief for working on that.

My father would tell anyone who would listen that this dentist thing he was doing was not his passion; cinematography was.

It's just, for me, the natural standard: a woman should be able to decide over her own body.

I discovered the 7th art at home when I was kid, through Charlie Chaplin's movies and those of my father who shot documentaries. He was my biggest influence. So I took his camera and started shooting.

I got to work with my wife, Lena Olin, for the first time, which was great. I thought it might be difficult in some way to talk to one's wife in a different way but it was so not forced.

Many of the comedies I had made in Sweden were slightly based on semi-autobiographical experiences, so adapting novels was a very different experience.

My films do have characters who have trouble escaping the world around them.

My key interest in choosing scripts is character-driven stories, because there are so many stories that sacrifice character for plot.

It was important on The Shipping News to have my house far enough away from each location so I had this time in the morning to think about my shots and still remain open to surprises once I got to the set.

I imagined that it might be awkward to talk to your wife about her performance, so going into it I was a little nervous. But doing it was actually a wonderfully inspiring experience.

To see my wife getting inspired from my notes and thoughts, going in the direction I wanted, and have her surprise me with wonderful choices was a real treat.

I love involving actors at all levels - and they have to know that I want to hear their contributions, with dialogue, with story suggestions, with script changes, whatever.

My father was an amateur filmmaker who shot 8mm color documentaries.

I think I avoid stepping into sentimentality by trying to be as truthful as possible with performances.

I'm on this diet where you're supposed to eat only fish and meat.

I feel the need to work with my wife, Lena Olin, again.

I really want to have actors contribute their own ideas, with phrasings and ideas on all levels.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.

Well, the hardest thing to do, as we know from our own experience on 9/11 is protect everything all the time.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

When I reached adulthood, even now, I could afford to belong to a country club. But I could never belong to a private club because of my experience as a child, because it would isolate me from the whole of humanity.

No one I know of has ever had this experience-where you had to sit and wait and wait for a DNA test to come back just so you can write the last page of the book.

If you live long enough, you'll experience everything.

Actually I'd had a certain amount of experience in Europe in the inter-war period, as a banker, and I was also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Chamber of Commerce.

In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.