Jean-Luc Godard Quotes

Film is truth 24 times a second, and every cut is a lie.

What I like in pictures whether by an old director or a young director is when I have the feeling he or she is really using the capacity of film.

I've always said that to make movies, to make images and sound, is possible by one way or another. And it has not to be ruled by the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Pharaohs from Hollywood or wherever. I have tried very hard to make even a small budget picture here. It always fails. Over a dozen times. And now I know why. It was only because I wanted to be in control of the money. To spend it the way I wanted.

It makes me laugh when you bring two things together which have nothing to do with one another.

If you have $300,000 to shoot a cigarette on a table, it's an enormous amount of money. Maybe that's why my movies are the way they are. But it's the only way I can make a living.

When I have a low budget I always try to make it a lesson in economy.

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.

I don't know if I am free because I am happy or happy because I am free.

The average income in France is $1,000 a month, and you can't live decently on that.

To be or not to be. That's not really a question.

Give me more. Let's do what has not been done.

All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality.

This new world which is being born is cynical and amnesiac. And it has eliminated perspective.

Cinema is movement, after all.

The trouble with Hollywood is that it has poisoned us. If you see a poster of a movie it is mainly the picture of a woman and a man. Always a love story. Yes. But it shouldn't be that way. It should be another (way).

Sometime reality is too complex. Stories give it form.

One can be a good critic and a moral observer, but one remains professionally detached as a writer and a filmmaker.

When there's 100 people around you can't really forget yourself.

When sex gets problematic, the totalitarianist walks in.

Through most of my career I've made a decent living making movies no one wants to see.

People in life quote as they please, so we have the right to quote as we please. Therefore I show people quoting, merely making sure that they quote what pleases me

One must confront vague ideas with clear images.

TV has nothing to do with painting. It's just transmission.

If I'm speaking it means that in one way or another when I say, "I'm cold" it belongs to me: I'm cold. But just by saying this it becomes general.

This is not a just image, this is just an image.

I've always considered the French-speaking part of Switzerland as a province of France.

Cinema is not a series of abstract ideas, but rather the phrasing of moments.

Cinema teaches us about the human body and how we look at things.

Once we know the number one, we believe that we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus.

I'm very interested in tennis, but when I try to tell younger players about [Bill] Tilden, they're not interested.

If we think today the way TV is ordering us to think, we think of Einstein as someone modern. Stravinsky is modern music, but it came at the time of Birth of a Nation, which is an old movie.

I have a large number of cassettes, but I look at them mainly for reference purposes.

When I go in front of the light - go towards it - it is because it brings me energy. That's all.

We once believed we were auteurs but we weren't. We had no idea, really. Film is over. It's sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur.

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life.

We are all older and more tired.

In movies, comedy and tragedy are all the same.

Film is like a personal diary, a notebook or a monologue by someone who tries to justify himself before a camera.

The tree or the road - the ones I know of, finally they are the only characters I know really. The human characters I don't know. So there is both something I know and something I don't know. And I put them together.

I'm satisfied to have an ordinary success and an ordinary life and an ordinary income. Later, I don't know.

When you photograph a face . . .you photograph the soul behind it.

You can be with other people, which is ideal, or you can be alone.

I don't think I've succeeded in making any really good films. There are moments, scenes, whole movements that sing. It has all added up to a cinema of sorts, even though I'm still learning my art.

If you have made three or four films, my feeling is, he is older than me because I am still making my first movie. That helps me.

Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.

Because my movies are not successful, they are not shown. So I make a living from the budget.

There is no point in having sharp images when you've fuzzy ideas.