Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer.

You have to be strong to be a carpenter, maybe, but the director of a film doesn't need to have muscles.

I tried to find a language for the film - not just telling stories. I picked the Picasso painting because it said more than I could explain. I need images, I need representation which deals in other means than reality. We have to use reality but get out of it. That's what I try to do all the time.

It's peaceful to think about the family as a group. I totally believe in extended families.

I'm interested in people who are not exactly the middle way, or who are trying something else because they cannot prevent themselves from being different, or they wish to be different, or they are different because society pushed them away.

The story of a couple is always very fragile, especially over more than thirty years. People know it's not easy, and even though you have strong feeling and desire and endless love, it doesn't always happen.

There is a song of Gainsbourg that Jane Birkin sang, and the words are beautiful in French. It says, "Le jeu et les moi." It's impossible to translate, because it has a very nice sound. It sounds so lovely in French. So I took that because it was the subject: I and myself and myself and I. Which is, in a way, boring, because it is a contradiction.