A Quote by Susanne Bier

I'm extremely straightforward. And I can't do that sort of traditional girl thing of saying one thing that actually means something else. I never understood it, and I still don't understand it.
For my 21st birthday, I think my mother wanted to give me a watch, or something, you know, some kind of traditional thing. And I said, "Well, if you're going to buy me something, there's a Gibson Melody Maker guitar advertised in the paper for 60 dollars. Do you think I could have that?" And I think that she was very disappointed that at 21 I was still messing around with that sort of thing. She didn't understand what it was all about. But now she understands it, and likes it.
I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.
I've never been the sort of person who takes things for granted, and I'm not an acquisitions girl. So I didn't feel entitled to a car when I was 16. Of course, I was bummed I didn't get one, because I was an American Texas teenager! But I understood it. I've never gotten my self-esteem from having the newest, most spectacular thing.
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
It's OK not to understand the whole trans thing. That's alright. My dad didn't understand it. I still don't know everything. What's important is you sort of educate yourself on your own time, but you have to respect it on everyone else's time. Because no one should have to wait for equality.
A thing chosen always as an end and never as a means we call absolutely final. Now happiness above all else appears to be absolutely final in this sense, since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else.
But it's me taking a stand for something that means something. And it's for the fighters who are up and coming. It's sort of the same stance Martin Luther King and Malcolm X made, so we could have freedoms, so everybody could tell the world that we're equal. The only thing I'm saying is that we are equal. So if you're not on nothing and I'm not on nothing, then let's go take the test. That's all I'm saying.
I mean the only thing that is hopefully good about us is after the arguments we can actually still face each other the next day or the day after and talk about something else and sort of get over it.
The key to teaching anything is to remember what it was like not to understand that thing. That's a very hard thing to do. Every time you come to understand something you didn't understand before, you are transformed. You become a different person from who you were before. The key to teaching someone else to understand that same thing is to remember your former, untransformed self. If you can do that, I think you can teach anything, even physics.
Everyone has to understand what we're saying to one another and there's no point in me thinking the line means this and the person I'm speaking to thinks it means something else. So there's a certain amount of analyzing of text that's of course necessary.
I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even 'pass the salt' - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying that. Maybe that's what gives the impression that I'm saying one thing and thinking something else.
Some accents people - internationally - can't understand, also they come with baggage. London means a certain thing, Liverpool means a certain thing. Whereas with Welsh, he can be a middle-class man with working-class roots and still have an accent and it not be an issue.
The enterprise of describing something in language that has never been described before is a very difficult thing to do. When you decide to do away with old cliches or old phraseologies, and to come up with a new way of saying something, it's extremely difficult.
Americans don't understand what metaphor in cinema is about. They're extremely good at making straightforward, linear narrative movies, which entertain superbly. But they very rarely do anything else.
People always ask me, "Oh, do you ever want to start your own thing?" And I don't, actually. I think what I enjoy most is the sort of co-production of things, where you bring something and somebody else brings something and a kind of alchemy happens.
As a general thing, I've always been drawn to characters who appear to be one thing on the surface, but are actually something else underneath.
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