There is a new philosophy for weapons: it's more expensive to hurt people than to kill people. It's terrible. When you have a band of guys on the battlefield, if someone is dead, he's dead. If someone is injured then they have to take care of him, so six people are busy.

I think we're entering a new period of filmmaking that's analogous to switching from black-and-white to color, or from silent to sound. The medium is completely flexible, and it's not bound by anything. If you imagine something, you can do it.

In France, I am so free. I have more freedom than most American directors could dare to even imagine.

If I would want to have a huge audience, I would make American movies, not French movies, because there is a limit of course with French language. If I prefer to shoot in my own language, it is to play with my language, to play in my Paris, and I have complete freedom in France. It's so amazing. If American directors could imagine how free I am, they would have asked for political asylum immediately.

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.

I like the cinema of people like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. I am not keen on trying to reproduce reality - for that you should do documentaries.

I write scripts by myself. It's not for everybody. It's someone's personal work. I need to be in love with the subject.