Western civilization shapes the content of my films, provides me with subjects that haven't been used before.

I do not say with words. I do not say it with images either.… I do not say, I show. I show people who move and speak. That is all I know how to do, but that is my true subject.

But if I didn't read, I'd think, and thinking, when you come down to it, is the most painful thing of all, and the most monopolizing

I don't think that my films are 'literary'; they are based on the most ordinary things of life.

You have to know how to go against the trend of the times.

I don't owe my success to state subsidies but to a faithful public which has sustained me.

You can't think of nothing.

I think that high art reposes on popular art, without one there cannot be another.

The French don't seek out alliances except when there are difficulties.

The French are very individualistic.

A good film is also a documentary

He will not let you come barging in to his world like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

God Father (the Creator) geometrizes, God Mother (Nature) fractalizes.

Sentimentalists are they who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done.

Truth is in things, and not in words.

It is better to be nothing than a follower of other painters. The wise man has said when one follows another one is always behind.

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

If writing a novel is a year's exile to a foreign country, writing a short story is a weekend spent somewhere exotic. They're much more like vacations, more exciting and different, and you're off.

I'm not good at selling laptops. I'm good at selling ideas.

People who believe I'm an idiot don't hire me and they don't call.

A private Life is to be preferrd; the Honour and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it.