This [the earthquake] was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films.

I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.

I can only display what I've been nurtured with, which is this worldview which has become my view. If I displayed anything different from it in my work, I wouldn't deserve this heritage.

Anything I've not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.

Everybody knows that I am not usually patient enough to actually sit down and watch one of my own films from the beginning to the end - I never do.

Children are very strong and independent characters and can come up with more interesting things than Marlon Brando, and it's sometimes very difficult to direct or order them to do something.

I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.