[on Somewhere (2010)] Harris Savides, the cinematographer, showed me the Chantal Akerman movie Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and so, I just thought, it was so cool that you can watch someone being alone and it's real time and you're not bored. [Artforum]

[on The Godfather: Part III (1990)] Let's see. Did I not wanna do it? Um. I was game. I was trying different things. It sounded better than college. I didn't really think about the public aspect of it. That took me by surprise. The whole reaction. People felt very attached to the Godfather films. I grew up with them being no big deal. I mean, I understand they're great films but... I dunno. I'm not surprised. It makes sense that people would have an opinion about it but I got a lot of attention I wasn't expecting. I was going to art school anyway so I was able to get back to what I was doing. It was before the Internet so magazines would come out but then the next month they were gone. There wasn't even as much paparazzi around then.

[on the criticism for her performance in The Godfather: Part III (1990)] Because I didn't want to be an actress, it didn't traumatize me. It hurt me to be attacked by the press...but the scars were not permanent. It was painful, but it wasn't devastating.

People tell me how proud of me my father is. Now that I have a kid, I get it. She can make a little drawing and it's so exciting.

The story of the Bling Ring seemed to say so much about what's happening in our culture today - all the interest in reality stars and kids posting pictures on Facebook all the time.

The movie I did before The Bling Ring (2013) was really slow and quiet, so I was just in the mood to do something obnoxious and faster, and something kind of in bad taste.

My friend's 12-year-old son is really into Rick Ross, and I was like, "What's the most thug song that would be the most poseur-ish for this blond girl to be playing?"

There are always things that I wish were different, or I feel like I've made mistakes. But it's just part of it. I don't mind that it's a little homemade.

I try to just make what I want to make or what I would want to see. I try not to think about the audience too much.

Marie Antoinette (2006) was the only time I've worked more with a studio, so it was important for me to have creative freedom, I never get myself in a situation where I don't have creative freedom. I learned that from my dad: you put your heart into something, you have to protect it, what you're making. I always like to keep the budget as small as possible just to have the most freedom. You know you get left alone, you get to pick the actors you want to use. I like doing personal films, after doing a bigger movie, I enjoy doing smaller, intimate films. I've always written my own scripts, I really like doing everything from the beginning and taking it all the way through, I've probably learned that from my dad.

[on Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)] It seems like it should be boring because it's these very long takes of her washing her dishes and doing these mundane things, but it's really fascinating because the actress [Delphine Seyrig] is so great. She's so natural.

[re filmmaking choices] I feel like when I finish one, the next one is always a reaction to the one before. So after I did Marie Antoinette (2006), which was so decorative with so many characters, then I wanted to make Somewhere (2010) where it was just two characters, really simple. And then after that, which was so simple and slow paced, I felt in the mood to do this kind of gaudy, flashy, faster-paced one. But I feel like I'm usually just naturally drawn to something. I don't know what I want to do next, but I feel like doing something beautiful after this [The Bling Ring (2013)].

My mom is very calm and quiet, so I think I got that from her. Because my dad is passionate and loud. ...It was always interesting and I really enjoyed that my parents always included us in their lives. So we got to be around all these interesting people and go on adventures. I mean there definitely were hard times...as a teenager losing my brother. He died in a boat accident when I was 15 and he was 22, and we were very close. I have one brother now, Roman. I think our family is so close because we would go on location with my dad sometimes, and we weren't around neighborhood kids and so we had to hang out with each other and be friends with each other.

[on The Bling Ring (2013)] When I read the Vanity Fair [magazine] article about these kids, it summed up everything that I think is declining in our culture. And it just doesn't feel like anyone is talking about it. Kids are inundated with reality TV and tabloid culture so much that this just seems normal. When I go to a concert, everyone is filming and photographing themselves and then posting the pictures right away. It is almost as if your experiences don't count unless you have an audience watching them. There are even videos of kids having their sweet-16 birthdays and they want a red-carpet V.I.P. theme. This movie was about an extreme version of this...It frightens me, and it just seems like this trash culture is becoming acceptable as mainstream culture...I don't know if I would have been as interested in this if I didn't have daughters and know that they're growing up in this world. I think that's the way that it's affecting, because these are kids in the movie, they're so young and impressionable.

After seeing "Cinderella," [my daughter] Romy keeps telling me that she wants to be on the Broadway stage. I'm hoping she'll outgrow that. We'll see. Romy is in the Girl Scouts and I was around this group of 6-year-olds, and we were talking about things and a few of them said, 'I want to be famous.' I thought, Where does that come from? I don't think we knew about that when we were 6 years old.

There's so many more female directors than when I started. That's encouraging. Maybe it's because it's such an all-encompassing job, and if you have a family, it's harder to do. But there are female surgeons. And there's plenty of women working in the film business.

My dad came on the set of The Virgin Suicides (1999) and told me, "You should say 'Action' louder, more from your diaphragm." I thought, O.K., you can go now. I'm not going to say it wasn't intimidating, but when you direct is the only time you get to have the world exactly how you want it. My movies are very close to what I set out to do. And I'm superopinionated about what I do and don't like. I may say it differently, but I still get what I want.

We were always around my dad, so he wasn't absentee at all. I don't think it was normal, but it was exciting. You always had lots of creative people around, and my parents took us everywhere. I got exposed to so many different cultures and people. I mean, I got to go to Akira Kurosawa's house as a child.

[on Marie Antoinette (2006)] I was drawn to the idea of this girl being so young, and that our perceptions of Marie Antoinette, the myth, how she was turned into this villainous queen, are so different to the actual person, and she was just this kid that got sucked into a weird situation.

I'm always a sucker for a love story.

I was going to art school and trying different things. I was interested in a lot of, mostly visual arts. I didn't know what I wanted to do and then I made a short film and felt like it was a combination of all these interests of mine with design and photography and music. But it was really when I read the book The Virgin Suicides that made me wanna make a movie.

[on Marie Antoinette (2006)] All I can say is that I set out to challenge myself with each movie, and having to do a period film was a huge challenge. How to do it in a fresh way, and from the point of view of a strange girl in a strange world? If you attempt something new, it's always a risk.

That's the way I work: I try to imagine what I would like to see.

"You're considered superficial and silly if you are interested in fashion, but I think you can be substantial and still be interested in frivolity." - when discussing the topic of her movie, Marie Antoinette (2006).

On taking her stage name, "Domino", at the age of 11: "I thought it was glamorous."