Everyone who works in the domain of fiction is a bit crazy. The problem is to render this craziness interesting.

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a movie theatre is to go down to the front and turn around, and look at all the uplifted faces, the light from the screen reflected upon them.

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

Purely cinematic film ... actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea.

But the cinephile is … a neurotic! (That’s not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it’s because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, “When you love life, you go to the movies,” it’s false! It’s exactly the opposite: when you don’t love life, or when life doesn’t give you satisfaction, you go to the movies.

Some day I'll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste.

What switched me to films was the flood of American pictures into Paris after the Liberation.