To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it's for them.

I guess George Clooney would be a wonderful silent actor, and Leonardo DiCaprio is such a wonderful actor he certainly could do it.

I only have one obsession - not to be boring.

If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know.

I guess all the directors in France are influenced by Hitchcock, because he's the perfect visual director, in my eyes.

I am unusual for a Frenchman - I have absolutely nothing against the United States.

Sometimes when an actor says something almost perfect, but you know you have to edit it, if you tell them to change something immediately, it will come out great

But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important.

I make almost all the decisions on set and have to deal with all the financial aspects.

I want to thank three person: I want to thank Billy Wilder. I want to thank Billy Wilder. And I want to thank Billy Wilder.

French cinema audiences usually don't express anything. Certainly not satisfaction.

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.

When he is wounded, I bleed. {page 262 of John Adams}

This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits who are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth

For 'Tis not in mere death that men die most.

It's hard to replace the gray matter that is inherent in every human being. No computer can do it quite that well yet.

Self-sacrifice of one innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of a million men who die in the act of killing others.

Remember, only what you give can God multiply back. If you give nothing, and even if God were to multiply it, it would still be nothing!

I was a minister in the Frente Popular (Popular Front) government, one of the three in Chile during the Pedro Aguirre Cerda years, and I was as much a Socialist then as I am today.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

You can enjoy encouragement coming from outside, but you cannot need for it to come from outside.