An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind.

Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema.

I have to say from the outset that not all prose can be transferred to the screen.

MORE CONSISTENTLY THAN EVER I WAS TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT CINEMA AS AN INSTRUMENT OF ART HAS ITS OWN POSSIBILITIES WHICH ARE EQUAL TO THOSE OF PROSE. I WANTED TO DEMONSTRATE HOW CINEMA IS ABLE TO OBSERVE LIFE, WITHOUT INTERFERING, CRUDELY OR OBVIOUSLY, WITH ITS CONTINUITY. FOR THAT IS WHERE I SEE THE POETIC ESSENCE OF CINEMA.

All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love.

My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware the beauty is summoning him.

Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I'd say that film is the sculpting of time.