Quotes from Todd Haynes

I don't think there's any more synesthetic medium than film.

The film division at Amazon is made up of true cineastes who love movies and really want to try and provide opportunity for independent film visions to find their footing in a vastly shifting market. They love cinema.

The first time I saw Douglas Sirk was in college. I didn't encounter him on the late, late, late show like a lot of people; people a little older than me, maybe. But I saw him already as someone to take special note of in an academic context in college. I was immediately in a state of visual splendor.

I've always been interested in visual art and used to be much more into theater when I was younger, or more knowledgeable about what's going on. And literature has played a big part in my life.

I love visual mediums, and I've always painted and drawn.

I find movies rely upon dialogue too much sometimes, and you lose the power of what really the most basic cinematic language is, which is the visual language.

I think many of the ideas that opened up in the '60s got implemented in the '70s and that certain minority voices that were not being heard in the '60s, like women and gay people, were being heard in the '70s. Black Civil Rights had also found its foothold, and those ideas were also very pertinent.

Making a film is so scary, and there's such a kind of void that you're working from initially. I mean, you can have all the ideas and be as prepared as possible, but you're also still bringing people together and saying, 'Trust me,' even when you don't necessarily trust every element.

I love serial drama.

I have always had an interest in performers who play against the most obvious of expectations and are able to find something secret, something withheld, and some level of restraint.

'Carol' takes place at a time the country was crawling out of the shadows of the war years, feeling the new vulnerabilities of the Cold War and conflicts within the union.

The best love stories on film are rooted in the point of view of the more woundable, vulnerable party, the more amorous party.

It's absurd: half the movie audience are women, but Hollywood bosses are still aiming for men who are 20.

Some directors do recut their films, but I don't if I disagree, and what you suffer is a less passionate marketing campaign, less investment in the film at the other end, which is... fine. I get it.

In a way, I think Roxy Music is high camp, in a brilliant way.

'Mildred' was the first film I shot on Super 16 with Ed Lachman, and we decided to continue doing so for 'Carol.'

After 'Superstar,' I was encouraged. I felt audiences wanted to be challenged.

My parents are very supportive and proud.

I think all my films can be enjoyed. In fact, they've often surprised me with how they're received.

Pop music can get inside us and enter our memory bubbles. It provides those true Proustian moments, unlocking sensations, unlocking our imaginations. Music inspired me as a filmmaker.

When you're shooting concert scenes in films, we try to bring in, where appropriate, as much of a sense of live performance as possible.

I liked to act in plays when I was a kid, and then in college. But that's the last time I really acted. I always loved it. But my interests were more in looking at the whole, rather than getting completely swallowed up in a single part of the whole.

I do know my own films don't necessarily work within that high-pressure reductive moment of the opening weekend - or all the ways that many people assess the value of movies.

I live in Portland. I'm a man of the world, and I live in Portland.