I see myself as a storyteller.

I've got this fear of becoming comfortable.

None of my movies are autobiographical.

I think it is kind of depressing how few female filmmakers there are. I think it is in general depressing how few women there are in ... important positions in society

There are good and bad movies, and long ones, and pretentious ones, and fun ones, and it's kind of healthy not just being able to switch off after ten minutes, but have patience.

I think there's a misconception of my wanting to do dark stuff.

The main thing as a director, you always want to have a bit of a worry about the material you're going to get yourself into. You want to be a bit scared of it so that you have that excitement of having to climb the mountain.

Anders Thomas Jensen and I had talked about making a movie which addressed the cancer issue, and we didn't want to make it heavy-handed. We wanted to do something which had a lot of hope in it. And then for some reason we came up with a romantic comedy.

The foundations of our lives are far more fragile than we think. So we are severely shaken when life turns out to have a will of its own.

You win an Oscar, and the movie that comes after that is always going to be compared.