I write scripts by myself. It's not for everybody. It's someone's personal work. I need to be in love with the subject.

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 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.

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.

Self-help is the best help

If the angels are unkind or the season is dark Or if in the end Love just falls apart Well then here's to our destruction Baby let me be your soul driver.

It's difficult to talk about colour, even remember colour actually.

You must do what you enjoy.

The world "out there" won't change until the world "in here" does.

There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow,- He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers.

O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.

All is going well so far. There are some remarks here and there and there are some complaints here and there but we expect to resolve those questions or complaints Sunday and the next day.

Alone is a fact, a condition where no one else is around. Lonely is how you feel about that.