Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.

What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.

There's no more film; now everything's digital. I welcome this. It's fantastic for me to have a new chance.

Having no children had been a kind of choice up to the moment when, from a choice, it became a sadness.

I remember being young in the 1960s. We had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting Last Tango in Paris, I was thinking I was doing a political film.

Pornography is not in the hands of the child who discovers his sexuality by masturbating, but in the heart of the adult who slaps him.