Every time I start a picture ... I feel the same fear, the same self-doubts . . . and I have only one source on which I can draw, because it comes from within me.

As a writer and director, I want to know what is behind the good manners and soft voice. Who is inside the silhouette?

A creator always needs excuses.

Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real.

Going to the cinema is like returning to the womb; you sit there, still and meditative in the darkness, waiting for life to appear on the screen.

The picture is in your head, in your imagination, everything.

The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all — that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open — has disappeared. Is it still possible that one thousand people might group together in the dark and experience the dream that a single individual has directed?