I loved cutting together simple commercials about margarine or soft drinks - all kinds of silly products - but I tried to make the commercials different.

In Finland, getting a university degree is the first thing that you expect your kids to do.

It proved to be pretty impossible to get funds for a feature film in Finland. It's still small, but the film industry was miniscule at that point in the early '80s.

I did some film reviews for small papers in Finland and things like that to be able to keep living here.

I loved movies and went to see every movie I could in Finland.

Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American.

You just never give up, no matter how hard the challenges are, and observe this world with a healthy dose of criticism and don't just follow the herd like somebody else might do.

I went out to some advertising agencies and asked if I could do anything.

I became a real Shell Motor Oil expert, and I did this 25-minute film. It turned out really well and, as a result, they offered me more work and lots of commercials to direct.

I was making films when I was about 12 years old - Super-8 films.

I feel like I learned very early on that your heroes are only as powerful as your villains. And I'm attracted to intelligent villains.

If you believe that you are not omnipresent, omniscient, and ultimately omnipotent, then you are deluded.

Let us be wild and weird with love for humanity.

Never underestimate the influence you have on others.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away

For my part I consider the earth very noble and admirable precisely because of the diverse alterations, changes, generations, etc. that occur in it incessantly.

The idea of working with David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson or Scorsese or Spielberg or any of the guys I really idolize is a dream for me.

You don't want to buy a surprise, because then the surprise is how awful it looks on you.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Always remember, it's simply not an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons.