I have much respect for the people that I work with, and it's reciprocal. My shoots are always very calm. Everyone has their work to do, and we try to respect everyone's work and give them the time necessary. There's never any tension. That's something that helps to attain the simplicity that I'm looking for.

It's one of the bases of all human existence - the relation between parents and children, whether biologically or metaphorically. It's something we can never get away from, even in a civilization where we're controlled by robots. It's the basic relationship between mature people who represent paternal and maternal figures and young people. It's universal - it's part of human existence. It's always been that way, and it will always be that way if humans remain around.

I work very hard to achieve simplicity, which is never natural, never spontaneous. It's always obtained at the price of a great effort.

Mature people transmit to young people a certain wisdom that comes from maturity, but young people are close to a more intuitive wisdom, and they can give that back to older people who have lost it to their maturation.

In France, we have laïcité, which means that atheism is almost our state religion. But I think a very important part of Western culture is in the centuries when Christianism was dominant and was present in almost all works of art - not only liturgical works, but also literature and music. Yes, it's important to have that in our present. It doesn't mean that people have to adhere to a dogma or practice a religion, but it's part of our heritage, and you have to at least try to understand it. Otherwise you can't be a modern person.

When you speak a foreign language, you become someone else. If you aren't used to speaking a language, and you start speaking it again, for the first few sentences you'll find yourself in very strange shape, because you're still the person who was speaking the first language. But if you keep speaking that language, you will become the person who corresponds to it.

When you see people on the street, they're living in their phones. They aren't living where they are - they haven't got the energy of the past. And so it's something that needs to be reestablished.