Sometimes I say, If I had seen some masterpieces, maybe I wouldn't have dared start. I started very - not innocent, but naïve in a way.

We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more. Even Vagabond - it was a fiction but it was really a documentary. I mean, it has the texture of documentary. Even if I made up every line, it has the texture of being true.

I didn't see films when I was young. I was stupid and naïve. Maybe I wouldn't have made films if I had seen lots of others; maybe it would have stopped me. I started totally free and crazy and innocent. Now I've seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don't do commercials, I don't do films pre-prepared by other people, I don't do star system. So I do my own little thing.

People like my films. They understand me through my films; it's like a connection that has been established between all my work and myself and the audience and the viewer.

I'm myself - knowing I'm doing a documentary and speaking with the people, telling them I have a bed, that I can eat every day, but I would like to speak to you. And they really gave me wonderful answers. We got along very well without trying to make me look like I'm what I'm not.

I'm missing some people, you know, and this is not nostalgia. I miss them. This is melancholy.

I don't believe in inspiration that arrives like a bolt from the blue ... It seems to me that the more motivated I am by what I film, the more objectively I film.