Paris is a beautiful city to walk around in. And, you know, all the obvious things: I like the museums, I like the theater, I like the dance. And it's manageable. The food's good. I know a lot of interesting people here. I lived in Boston for 50 years or more. Wherever I am, I'm usually holed up most of the time in the editing room, and so, when I leave the editing room, even if I just take a walk, it's gorgeous. And I walk everywhere. I'm a victim of the seduction of Paris.

I am bad at cultural generalizations but I would venture to say that by a wide margin there is less hypocrisy about sex in France than in America.

My job as a film editor is to construct a dramatic narrative because otherwise it's just a chaotic arrangement of sequences.

I'm very careful of not being critical of other people's movies, which work in different styles. I think some of my movies can be interpreted as critical of their subjects.

There's a literal track: who says what to whom, what are people wearing, etcetera. And there's the abstract track: what ideas are suggested by the literal. And the real movie takes place in the relationship between the literal and the abstract.

I think my movies aren't sentimental. I think my movies are funny and sad and realistic. Not realistic in the sense that they're documentaries, but realistic in the sense that they're not idealistic, they're not optimistic, not pessimistic, and not propagandistic. They're an analysis of a situation. I call it as I see it, so to speak.

I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.