Everyone has understood me in his own way. But I would have to understand myself first in order to judge - and so far, I haven't.

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

A film that can be described in words is not really a film.

A man who renounces something is also a man who believes in something.

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.

A film you can explain in words is not a real film.

The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying.

My work is like digging, it's archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. That's how I understand my first films, and that's what I'm still doing...

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

You are not for everybody, but you are for somebody.

A story is a part of the writer's soul, told to the world.

As a writer, I have readers who will have a range of political views. I don't think they look to me for political guidance.

Of course, the English countryside is completely artificial. It was naturally a forest; they chopped down the trees and made it into what it is now: really a beautiful country.

In childhood the daylight always fails too soon - except when there are going to be fireworks.

There's something about childhood friends that you just can't replace.

I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.

I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.

The true shaman, the true naturalist, works to reconnect conscious human life with Nature and Spirit through totems and ritual.

I love hanging and drawing and quartering Every bit as well as war and slaughtering.