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

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.

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema.

Airing one's dirty linen never makes for a masterpiece.

At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd be a critic or a filmmaker, but I knew it would be something like that.

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.

The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse.