In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.

In real life, when someone's partner calls them, they can tell from the first word their partner says what their mood is.

All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what's inside of all of us. If we X-rayed the insides of different human beings, we wouldn't be able to tell from those X-rays what the person's language or background or race is.

I think the contrast between these two in the professional world of cinema mattered to me. One who has reached the ultimate point of being a star, who knows how to do everything very well, facing another person who would throughout the making of the film transfer his anxiety to both of us, to me and to Juliette, as to whether or not he would be capable of fulfilling his role. This in itself created a challenge that was actually very good for me, since I hadn't ever counterposed two such performers before, creating that challenge between someone who knows their part and someone who doesn't.

The starting point and the ending point are nothing but two arbitrary choices. You make them as in soccer games, where they chose that it's 90 minutes, not less and not more. But the choices are the responsibility of the filmmaker. You have to choose to join the story at an arbitrary point, and you leave it at an arbitrary point.

You've noticed that same joke told by two different people, once works, and the other time doesn't, simply because how the person edits it. The silences, the pauses, what they neglect, what they emphasize - all of this matters.

Of the hundreds of points to enter and exit that are offered to me, I have to choose the one that I feel is the least wrong, the least fake. It is fake, it is a moment that I choose to erupt the story, but I make it as smooth as I can. What enables me to do it is the skill of filmmaking.