When I started my first film, there were three women directors in France. Their films were OK, but I was different. It's like when you start to jump and you put the pole very high - you have to jump very high. I thought, I have to use cinema as a language.

Sometimes I want to work with a DP, sometimes I want to work myself. I go to 35mm, 16mm, it's all the same, but it depends on what you want to tell and what are the tools you need.

I was eighteen, this was back in '46, so we also had these very frightening images of soldiers in the streets of Paris. So the effect of war, plus my shyness, plus my lack of education - I was afraid of men, really. It changes later, but it took me a certain time to adjust.

It's interesting work for me to tell my life, as a possibility for other people to relate it to themselves - not so much to learn about me.

People think you are an orphan when you are a child, and don't believe that old people can feel that they are orphans.

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.

I quit seeing some people who were saying bad things about women; I don't even want to meet them or see them.