You have to know how to go against the trend of the times.

I think that high art reposes on popular art, without one there cannot be another.

The French are very individualistic.

But if I didn't read, I'd think, and thinking, when you come down to it, is the most painful thing of all, and the most monopolizing

Western civilization shapes the content of my films, provides me with subjects that haven't been used before.

I don't think that my films are 'literary'; they are based on the most ordinary things of life.

I don't owe my success to state subsidies but to a faithful public which has sustained me.