Quotes from Xavier Dolan

For me, hipsterism is for one to appropriate the codes of a social class or another milieu that wasn't theirs originally, in order to define their personality through something different and unique. Which is why a lot of hipsters live downtown, and they're dressed as farmers. Then you have the Oscar Wilde hipster: the dandy.

The nature and the DNA of IMAX has been redefined in the past years to shoot these huge blockbusters. But I think that it's not the sole purpose of IMAX to capture cars exploding in your face.

The motivation for making movies is that people actually see them.

Sometimes I find it tiresome to write actions and describe the scene in a very intricate way so that every crew member understands where we are going - that I can find a little bit long and tiresome. But dialogue is just all my life. There's no way I could ever be challenged, not challenged, but I'm always so happy to write dialogue.

I love women in my heart but not in my undies.

'Heartbeats' is a film on people magnifying and subliming reality when they're in love. Hence the overstylized look, the aesthetics, the robes, the dresses, the vintage, hipster-ish look: All of this is voluntary. I'm not a hipster. I'm not!

Here's the thing with the costumes for 'Mommy': Given the background and social strata that the characters come from, you can't really imagine that they've gone shopping lately, so we went for that very normcore, fashionless era in history, the early 2000s, which was completely transitional.

For me, 'Mommy' was about developing very humane characters that would be very credible and endearing and work onscreen.

I think of 'Mommy' as very simplistic or not simplistic, but I wish for the style to actually work with what you see onscreen and what you feel in that very moment. I hope we did not disrespect the characters by being too flamboyant when it's not necessary.

I'm sick of people imposing cultural references and influences on me, but I'm not sick of people talking about my age.

When I saw Bryan Singer's 'Usual Suspects,' I knew how it was going to end because I'd seen 'Scary Movie.' Which is not the preferred order of things, but that's how it is because my childhood was 'Home Alone,' 'Matilda,' 'Batman Returns,' 'Jumanji,' 'Secret Garden,' 'Jack,' 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' 'Titanic.' Only family films from the '90s.

I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this. But I have will to defend people - it can be all sorts of people.

The scene of independent cinema is already a large scene in America, and not in a negative way, but it's cluttered. It's very populated with just American films, so the room left for foreign movies is not extremely vast. The American public also does not really read. They don't read subtitles. But we're like that in Canada, too.

Music was the only voice of cinema for a very long time before we had sound; it's organically linked to cinema itself.

It's ludicrous to think people work for you: 'a film by...' doesn't exist. Directed by, maybe, but it's a film from a collective, a group of people whom you consult and seek your counsel and advice and vice versa, too.

It was a privilege to direct the music video for Adele's beautiful, heartbreaking song, 'Hello.' When I first heard it, all the images appeared clearly in my head - and her trust and generosity allowed me to work with abandon artistically and emotionally, like she always does. It made me extremely proud.

I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this.

Orson Welles was lazy. He was a late bloomer.