Cinema d'auteur, cinema about people, about emotions. About la difficulté d'être, the difficulty of being, existential problems. That's what the nouvelle vague is. The early '60s was all about that.

Quite often in life, when a tragic event arrives it becomes a springboard for mirroring all other things in one's life that one hasn't come to terms with.

If words don't have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they're just words.

I can occupy myself quite easily with what's going on inside me.

I know I have great inner strength; I always have. I can blank things out, cut people out, and I know that I can go and live in a cave on my own if necessary.

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films

You go though a period of immense pain when reality meets the dream.

I can be seen as not being very communicative, or rather mysterious, or distant, or rather cold - all those things. Yeah, I know I can give off that impression. So I am that, too.

Training is fabulous because it gives you a basis, a strong structure, so that when you're unbelievably nervous and you think that you can't get a word out, you will get the word out.

There's always a time for change, and you should never be frightened of it.

You can't fool an audience with lots of bits and pieces. You have to lead them somewhere.

It will be impossible to catch all the rats, my love, ” he says. His hand brushes against mine. “Sooner or later, one will squeeze through the cracks. You need to be more careful.

Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.

The born-again Christian sees life not as a blurred , confused, meaningless mass, but as something planned and purposeful.

My brother says I'm too famous to hang around with him.

If I had nothing to do and I wanted to sit in a dark room and relax, I could at times. But to be busy is very nice. To have things to do and have a schedule.

If there is a true universal mind, must it be sane?

An art aims, above all, at producing something beautiful which affects not our feelings but the organ of pure contemplation, our imagination.

Those who are lacking in bhakti (devotion), lacking in faith, are ill qualified to interpret the scriptures.

It's great the way the old-time directors used to manipulate the hell out of you. You see someone dying and all of a sudden a ghost would come out and they go walking hand in hand up the stairway.

Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibres.