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

People like to say, 'What do you mean exactly?' I would answer, 'I mean, but not exactly.'

Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)

Cinema is capitalism in its purest form.... There is only one solution - turn one's back on American cinema.

I am still associated with a heroic period in French cinema, and my name remains linked to this period.

The way we have done pictures has to be disappeared.

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't.