Susanne Quotes & Sayings

In a way, the whole notion of a blueprint of a building is not that different from a script for a movie. A sequence of spaces, which is what you do as an architect, is really the same as a sequence of scenes. — Susanne Bier

As comedy presents the vital rhythm of self-preservation, tragedy exhibits that of self-consummation. — Susanne Katherina Langer

It is significant that people who refuse to tell their children fairytales do not fear that the children will believe in princes and princesses, but that they will believe in witches and bogeys. — Susanne Katherina Langer

For me, grief is a static thing, and my movies have an extremely dynamic sort of movement. — Susanne Bier

For years, whenever I'd been travelling and came back to Copenhagen, I'd think: 'People are so stylish.' And it's not any one class. It's everyday life. — Susanne Bier

I have this almost obsessive desire to whomever is close to me: I want to have a very intense, close, intimate relationship with them. — Susanne Bier

I think possibly, as an artist, you're always treated with a certain respect but also with a certain sort of nervousness. — Susanne Bier

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. — Susanne Bier

As a filmmaker, I always try not to concern myself with the outcome of things. I make the movie, and I do that as honestly and good as I can. I don't want to pollute my thoughts with what is going to happen with it afterwards, because I have to work inside-out. — Susanne Bier

In this time of , music is vital. — Susanne Dunlap

I don't want actors to be writers. I think it's too much responsibility. — Susanne Bier

The high intellectual value of images, however, lies in the fact that they usually, and perhaps always, fit more than one actual experience. — Susanne Katherina Langer

None of my movies are autobiographical. — Susanne Bier

I've always been slightly hesitant about generalizing movies made by men and women being different in their nature; I think movies by each director are different. Having said that, I think that it's kind of disgraceful that there aren't more female directors. — Susanne Bier

If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions. — Susanne Langer

Susanne Alleyn's Game of Patience is a well-crafted historical mystery, authentic in every detail. Wonderfully entertaining. — Sandra Gulland

I don't know that there's more bullying or whether it's just more talked about. It seems to me that possibly that there's been a lot of bullying all the time, but at the moment, it's something that people are talking about. — Susanne Bier

The historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it. — Susanne Katherina Langer

I do believe that everything can look beautiful if you look at it from outside. The closer you zoom in, most of us exhibit behaviour that is strange to someone from outside. — Susanne Wuest

We always want to find good and bad guys, and I don't believe in that. — Susanne Bier

A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problem than by its solution of them. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Language is therefore "both the medium and the object of representation" (Fludernik 2009:64), and while we have direct access to the medium (i.e. the language(s) on the level of text), the latter (i.e. the language(s) on the level of narration and on the level of story) can only be constructed from the former. As pointed out in the introduction, this distinction between language as medium and language as object and the relationship between the two has so far not been awarded a significant role in scholarly writing about the linguistic hybridity typical for cross-cultural writing. Differentiating between the language(s) as medium and the language(s) as object becomes necessary, as the relation between medium and object is not one-to-one. The same medium can represent different objects. Two short — Susanne Klinger

Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune — Susanne Katherina Langer

We have no physical model of this endless rhythm of individuation and involvement, we do have its image in the world of art, most purely in dance. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Music is our myth of the inner life ... — Susanne Katherina Langer

The faith of scientists in the power and truth of mathematics is so implicit that their work has gradually become less and less observation, and more and more calculation ... But the facts which are accepted by virtue of these tests are not actually observed at all. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Women, nowhere in the world, have the kind of important position in society in the amount that they ought to have. — Susanne Bier

Fire is a natural symbol of life and passion, though it is the one element in which nothing can actually live. — Susanne Katherina Langer

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

A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents. — Susanne Langer

The Past, being in the mode of memory, is closed, inalienable, and irreparable ... — Susanne Katherina Langer

My favorite hobby is matchmaking. It's a lot easier to do it in movies then in real life because in real life, people don't do what I tell them to do. — Susanne Bier

Pioneering is the work of individuals ... — Susanne Katherina Langer

It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age. — Susanne Katherina Langer

The assignment of meanings [in music] is a shifting, kaleidoscopic play, probably below the threshold of consciousness, certainly outside the pale of discursive thinking. The imagination that responds to music is personal and associative and logical, tinged with affect, tinged with bodily rhythm, tinged with dream, but concerned with a wealth of formulations for its wealth of wordless knowledge, its whole knowledge of emotional and organic experience, of vital impulse, balance, conflict, the ways of living and dying and feeling. — Susanne K. Langer

I really don't like that modern notion of 'I don't need anyone.' I see a lot of young women feeling they have to be that way, they have to be hard, in a way. And what does that bring them? They're just going to be lonesome. They're going to be, at best, lonesome and capable, at worst, lonesome and hard. And is that what we want? No. — Susanne Bier

The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature. Art education is the education of feeling, and a society that neglects it gives itself up to formless emotion. Bad art is corruption of feeling. — Susanne Katherina Langer

The intellectual treatment of any datum, any experience, any subject, is determined by the nature of our questions, and only carried out in the answers. — Susanne Katherina Langer

I'm a huge fan of Richard Curtis - there's real grief, real compassion in his films as well as cheekiness; it's a wonderful cocktail. — Susanne Bier

I did learn a lot from 'Things We Lost in the Fire,' but I've learned different things from different films. — Susanne Bier

Whether it be in the sun, the rain, or the snow,

You should always have fun, wherever you go.

Think of all the amusing things you can do,

To bring much laughter and happiness too. — Susanne Alexander-Heaton

Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling. — Susanne Katherina Langer

John le Carre's 'The Night Manager' is a relentlessly exhilarating thriller with profound emotional depths. — Susanne Bier

I give everything to my work, and I like complex roles, characters that aren't obvious. I've been very lucky so far, and I'm dreaming of working with directors like Jane Campion, Susanne Bier and the Dardennes. But the gods will decide. — Eva Green

All persistent practices in art have a creative function. They may serve several ends, but the chief one is the shaping of the work. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Every artistic form reflects the dynamism that is constantly building up the life of feeling. — Susanne Katherina Langer

I think most of my films all have a certain tone or intensity in them. They are tense, and you kind of anticipate some kind of catastrophe, but you're not quite sure. — Susanne Bier

The function of art is to acquaint the beholder with something he has not known before. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience ... — Susanne Katherina Langer

You don't have to go very far away from Scandinavia to realize what an idyllic society it is. — Susanne Bier

I do care. That's why I hunt them. But if you've seen what I have, then you learn to deal with the murders and disappearances. You learn to push it aside and move on. The other life isn't here anymore. This new world has its own rules. Survival of the fittest is one of them. If you're hoping for kindness and pity, don't hold your breath. — Susanne Winnacker

3 years, 1 month, 1 week, and 6 days since I'd seen daylight. — Susanne Winnacker

Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know. — Susanne Katherina Langer

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. — Susanne Bier

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 — Susanne Bier

The power of magic has no known limits. A person knows, in a fair way, his own physical capacities, the weight of the blows he can deal, the furthest range of his arrows, the strength of his voice, the speed and endurance of his running; but the reaches of his mind are indefinite and, to his feeling, infinite. — Susanne Katherina Langer

The power of understanding symbols, i.e. of regarding everything about a sense-datum as irrelevant except a certain form that it embodies, is the most characteristic mental trait of mankind. It issues in an unconscious, spontaneous process of abstraction, which goes on all the time in the human mind: a process of recognizing the concept in any configuration given to experience, and forming a conception accordingly. That is the real sense of Aristotle's definition of Man as "the rational animal". — Susanne Katherina Langer

The limits of thought are not so much set from outside, by the fullness or poverty of experiences that meet the mind, as from within, by the power of conception, the wealth of formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences. — Susanne Katherina Langer

I never have particular actors planned when I'm in the process of writing. — Susanne Bier

My mother has had breast cancer twice. And my mother has always been this very positive human being: a glass-half-full type. Like, when she was in treatment and feeling really bad, she would always talk about some nurse that was particularly nice to her. — Susanne Bier

Value exists only where there is consciousness. Where nothing ever is felt, nothing matters. — Susanne Katherina Langer

I generally edit quite heavily. In general, there aren't many scenes that are sitting where they sat in the script in the final form. — Susanne Bier

Homesick? For a village in the middle of nowhere? Where there's no work and everyone — Susanne O'Leary

I quite like some of the movies that have many characters in them. — Susanne Bier

A significant number of women who have been ill or had marital issues feel they have no value, and society is so keen on telling us that's the case. — Susanne Bier

I want to create, not kill. — Susanne Dunlap

The way a question is asked limits and disposes the ways in which any answer to it-right or wrong-may be given. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Parents can shape a child, but a great teacher can, too. — Susanne Bier

I believe in rules. I believe in artistic limitations, and I always have. I've always thought that setting out a set of rules before you start, and then being completely consistent with them, is the only way to make a really good film. — Susanne Bier

Having done a Dogme film taught me the beauty of simplicity and austerity. — Susanne Bier

Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life. — Susanne Katherina Langer

For the Oscars, I had a speech in my hand, and I just knew if I opened the piece of paper, I was going to be unable to read it. So I just thought, 'I'm going to say, as coherently as I can, whatever I can.' — Susanne Bier

The continual pursuit of meanings-wider, clearer, more negotiable, more articulate meanings- is philosophy. — Susanne Katherina Langer

I hate when the sun is high and there are no shadows. If I could do super high-budget movies, I would only shoot when the sun starts to get low - but you can't just shoot for four hours every day. — Susanne Bier

I've had a very fortunate, very privileged life. I say it with all humility because it could change tomorrow. — Susanne Bier

But this doesn't mean that there is incompatibility between regulation and rapid innovation: it is more of a disconnect, since both sides are there to serve customers' needs and it is those customers, both corporate and consumer, who will make the choice. These — Susanne Chishti

Common sense is a very tricky instrument; it is as deceptive as it is indispensable. — Susanne Katherina Langer

The secret of 'fusion' is the fact that the artist's eye sees in nature ... an inexhaustible wealth of tension, rhythms, continuities, and contrasts which can be rendered in line and color. — Susanne Katherina Langer

The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Dogme is like leading a religious life, in that you are freeing yourself from making certain choices. It makes life easier. — Susanne Bier

If my daughter's going to go out in the winter with summer clothes, I'm gonna question it. And at some point, I assume, if the conversation goes on long enough, if I can convince her, she will put on some warm clothes. And I think that sort of exchange is pretty valid. — Susanne Bier

I've got this fear of becoming comfortable. — Susanne Bier

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. — Susanne Bier

If you look at children's stories in fairy tales, they're pretty brutal. — Susanne Bier

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

Art is just as comprehensible as science, but in its own terms ... — Susanne Katherina Langer

The development of beings with minds is probably the highest individuation the world has ever known, and its prehistory is the history of life on earth. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Feeling, in the broad sense of whatever is felt in any way, as sensory stimulus or inward tension, pain, emotion or intent, is the mark of mentality. — Susanne Katherina Langer

I have a slight controversy with the Dogme brethren because I've been saying that rules are to be interpreted; not that I haven't followed the rules, because I don't see the point of submitting yourself to a set of rules if you don't follow them. But having said that, it is always a lot of interpretation. — Susanne Bier

When I watch a movie myself, I want to forget that I'm watching a movie, and I want to be inside the movie. That's the kind of experience I want my audience to have. — Susanne Bier

I am very close to my family, and there's something life-affirming about that. Even if you feel completely different from them and have totally different views on politics and ethics, you're still family and have that immediate acceptance. — Susanne Bier

Speech is the mark of humanity. It is the normal terminus of thought. — Susanne Katherina Langer

In human life, art may arise from almost any activity, and once it does so, it is launched on a long road of exploration, invention, freedom to the limits of extravagance, interference to the point of frustration, finally discipline, controlling constant change and growth. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Three directors whose work directly influences mine are Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky and Susanne Bier (her Danish films). You'll notice that they all don't make feel good movies, same as me, and their films are always visually simple but beautiful (and I hope mine are!). — Chika Anadu

You always do that, you know," Alec said.
I swallowed a gummy bear. "Do what?"
"Bite their heads off first."
I shrugged. "It's the nice thing to do. If you could choose, would you rather be eaten alive starting at your feet or would you want it to be over quickly? — Susanne Winnacker

In reality most people aren't as perfect as they want to seem. — Susanne Bier

What is artistically good is whatever articulates and presents feeling to our understanding. — Susanne Katherina Langer

Any creative process is about being in a territory which isn't secure, isn't necessarily familiar, and isn't convenient in any sort of way. And that's the excitement of it. — Susanne Bier

At some stage in most people's lives, things turn upside down, and nothing is as you expected it to be. — Susanne Bier