I like the cinema of people like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. I am not keen on trying to reproduce reality - for that you should do documentaries.

It's always more interesting and more difficult to make something positive than negative. To be negative is very easy.

For me, the most important word in cinema is the word freedom. For example, in Europe, we've got freedom, we've got the final cut and that's something which is marvellous.

I believe in imagination. I was a worker when I was 17. Between 17 and 21, I was a worker in the telephone company and imagination saved my life.

It's always been pretty easy for me to exercise my imagination. The other part of the brain, the one that does mathematics, is a nightmare for me. It doesn't work at all.

I've never made any concessions, so I am 100% responsible for my films. This makes me feel very proud.

All day my mind drifts off into fantasies and little stupid jokes.

In the States, I learned to fight for every idea. Sometimes, a director has to be a tyrant to keep the quality.

If you make the right choice in casting, your work is nearly done already. You don't have to spend a lot of time directing the actors, because they're so well suited to the parts.

I like looking back at people's faces in the dark. I like noticing details that no one else sees. But I hate it in the old American movies when drivers don't watch the road.

In general, I have some precise ideas about everything, because the film is completed in my head before we ever start shooting. With casting, I am always present, even for the smallest character.

Until you fall in love with positive change, becoming passionate about improving the status quo, you won’t become a leader.

It's never crowded when you walk on your own path.

Bumper sticker: Driver carries no cash - he has a son in college.

art is the pulse of a nation.

The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity.

Osama bin Laden has hired 10 look-alikes. Now, how hard up do you have to be before you take that job? There's no way to win! If Osama dies, you don't get paid. If you're found, you get killed.

In our natural Adamic state, we are not on our sick beds. We are in the grave.

Things always seem to end before they start

In the absence of big budgets, start-ups learned how to hack the system to build their companies.

Acting, at least for me, is very unreal, and when I'm doing it, I actually feel embarrassed.