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.

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.

I like looking back at people's faces in the dark. I like noticing details that no one else sees. But I hate it in the old American movies when drivers don't watch the road.

It's always more interesting and more difficult to make something positive than negative. To be negative is very easy.

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.

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

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.