If words don't have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they're just words.

I felt very special in Paris, more special than I felt in London. I love London for different reasons. I've always been close to London, being English. But somehow there's something special about living as an Englishwoman in Paris.

I've always been monogamous - [within it] I've been in love with people, but very platonically. For me, monogamous love is about learning how to be able to trust someone completely; so you need to be able to think you can trust them. But that doesn't mean you can't have extraordinary feelings for other people and not feel guilty about them, but not necessarily go and wreck marriages and consummate, and you don't have to do all that.

Ever since I was a small child, Ive had this feeling - its in my nature, and so its not even pretentious - that if everyones going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.

You become more and more charged with your life and with a life that you're observing. When I was younger, I was actually looking forward to getting older, to have more insight, more understanding. I'm much more tolerant with others and with myself. I'm not in rebellion all the time, I'm not angry so much. But all those feelings are really useful [when you're young] because they fire us, as long as they don't get out of control.

You don't need the painful memories, because either you've resolved them. Denying always makes them want to come back. Denial is a mechanism that doesn't work. But allowing them to come back in little by little, those memories, you can begin to be quite comfortable with them, and it's even nice to have that as part of the map of your life.

When I moved to Paris in the '70s, there wasn't very much going on in film in England. So when I started doing French films, there was a natural movement toward the kind of films I wanted to do. It wasn't the reason I came, but it so happened that I stepped into a time and place that actually corresponded to what I wanted. That sometimes happens in life. And it was rather beautiful.