Michael Haneke Quotes

46 quotes in 806 categories

• To be perfectly honest, I think that as I'm growing older, I'm just growing more impatient. I'll be very happy if at some point people…
• My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a…
• I'm not really a happy person. It's a question of temperament. I have a tendency toward melancholy. You can feel quite happily melancholic.
• Writers and filmakers, that is, people who describe the world, suffer from an occupational disease. They never experience moments in life quite spontaneously. You always…
• Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive…
• Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.
• It's the duty of art to ask questions, not to provide answers. And if you want a clearer answer, I'll have to pass.
• Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself
• A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.
• And if there was one title that could be applied to all my films, it would be 'Civil War' - not civil war in the…
• Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic forms. I think it's healthy to return to classical forms.
• An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.
• What we're doing for another person is more important than what we're feeling for them.
• People expect me to be dark and gloomy, then write that I'm a jolly chap, and after all, that is what I am. I think…
• Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's…
• It's a fact that people who are in a weakened position, whether physically or mentally, have this perception of the outer world as threatening. Everything…
• It's impossible to consider living without ideals. However, when ideas lead to ideology, that's a very dangerous thing. Ideology then leads to creating the image…
• It's unbearable when someone changes around you. Just imagine that your life partner changes, then it is difficult to cope with. Or your mother. Or…
• There is just as much evil in all of us as there is good. We're all continuously guilty, even if we're not doing it intentionally…
• A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.

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