Never say no. It always depends on what's possible. I don't care so much where it is; it's what I want to do that matters.

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.

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist real

Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves.

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

Laughter and love are their own forms of exercise meant to keep a body healthy.

Sometimes in films it's nice to have violins on either side, rather than on one side, so you've got more of a stereo picture with the violins. Sometimes it's good to have the basses in the middle.

Think of your pension and start saving. Like my father, I have been a spendthrift, and I regret that.

There were occasionally rifts in the cloud where the face of a woman appeared, frowning.

Football is a game of skill, we kicked them a bit and they kicked us a bit.

Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.

And if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that cool props and special effects are not enough. Story comes first. Everything depends on story.