I love New York. I was sad depressed and incredibly moved by our fellow countrymen and what they've done. I wanted to give people a chance to see something funny have a distraction.

Sometimes I am so dry that people don't know I'm kidding and think I'm being serious. I enjoy this because their reactions are often funny.

It's sort of an action flick. You can't be that funny trying to steal diamonds.

When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema its violence its naivety the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films violence is made consumable.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics that action and reaction are equal and opposite that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction obviously but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

There has to be chemistry in a duet but if you go beyond the point of friendship and attraction you lose something.

To stop terrorists before the strike we must do three things: deny them entry into the country curtail their freedom of action inside the country and deprive them of material and moral support from within the country.

I used to think that if I had success I would have freedom. But I have less freedom now than I've ever had. And what gives me satisfaction is not the jewelry and not the cars. What gives me satisfaction is doing things for others like children.

If freedom's best friends cannot unify around a realistic actionable program of fundamental change one that attracts and persuades a broad majority of our fellow citizens big change will not come.