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We all live under some repression; we have to, it's part of the deal.

I don't like denial. I don't like repression.

Power tends to get confused with repression.

Repression in the human psyche is tightly bundled. When it has been pulled out of the sprung package so often it is perhaps difficult to push it back in the box.

If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.

I like repressed characters. That gives me a lot of freedom to make a lot of different choices through subtleties.

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.

I turn down a lot of movies because sometimes they glamorize violence or the darker side of sex or criminality.

You can't intellectually purge yourself of who you are. Whatever that is, it's going to come out in the wash, the film wash. What you are is going to be relevant, if not to yourself, to the movies you make.