Something that I tell myself every morning when I wake up is like: "Think it over, take the time to think it over." I don't like spontaneity, there you go. I'm wary of it.

Do we root for Michael Corleone in the 'Godfather' films? I think so, even if he is a monster.

The cinema that interests me departs from realism.

For me, there was no great myth around the movies when I was a young child. My father was very simple about the whole thing. He did not consider cinema an art. Cinema was entertainment. Literature and music were art.

I don't feel comfortable with violence, and I'm not sure that I film violent scenes properly, and it's something I'm reticent to do, and yet violence is sort of in all of my films.

I was the little French boy who grew up hearing people talk of De Gaulle and the Resistance. France against the Nazis! Then when that boy grew up, he began to uncover things. We began to legitimately ask the question, 'What exactly did our parents do during the Occupation?' We discovered it was not the story they were telling us.

Used properly, cinema is the coolest thing in the world.