If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie.

Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic forms. I think it's healthy to return to classical forms.

I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers ingesting spoon-fed images.

Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

I'm not really a happy person. It's a question of temperament. I have a tendency toward melancholy. You can feel quite happily melancholic.

An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.

If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.

I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears with my work. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.

I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

Drama lives on conflict. If you're trying to deal with social issues seriously, there's no way of avoiding violence, which is so present in society.

Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.

Corporate & personal branding both require storytelling to be captivating. Stories provide context, meaning & the opportunity for relationship.

When we feel the clown, when we have been played, if we have lived by heart, acted out of compassion, we are the substance of the play, rather than merely being played.

Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either

I have wrought my simple planIf I give one hour of joyTo the boy who’s half a man, Or the man who’s half a boy.

I don't make culture. I sell it.

I personally feel the most vulnerable when I write. That's where I learned to tell the truth when I was young.

I think that Americans are very grateful to the Bush family for their public service.

But you grab a moment, or you let it pass.

Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.

Films are very influential, and I especially feel a responsibility to tell stories that have been pushed aside. Being able to shed light on issues that need to be brought to the world.