When critics love your film, you love critics. When they hate your film, you hate critics. It's the same everywhere, but maybe especially in France, where we have pretty good critics, except for three or four newspapers that are really dogmatic.

It's always been pretty easy for me to exercise my imagination. The other part of the brain, the one that does mathematics, is a nightmare for me. It doesn't work at all.

When you make something you like and audiences reject it, the experience can be painful. But I've discovered...that when you make something you aren't exactly satisfied with, and someone tells you it's great, that's even mor...e painful and frustrating.

In the States, I learned to fight for every idea. Sometimes, a director has to be a tyrant to keep the quality.

I love science fiction but I don't like fantastic [cinema]. For example, if you have a magical ring and you can explode the world with it. What are we talking about? You know, it's not interesting. I don't like Lord of the Rings. Even Star Wars, for me, I don't understand this kind of story. But Alien, because the rules of the game are very precise, it could happen. I love science fiction. I have an idea about robots in the future.

For me, the most important word in cinema is the word freedom. For example, in Europe, we've got freedom, we've got the final cut and that's something which is marvellous.

When I was a kid, I used to escape from my family with my imagination, and I kept this spirit into my adult life. This doesn't always happen. All children have imagination, but for some it doesn't carry over.