I don't think I have a definitive film. Such a thing is not possible for me.

I don't think it's so important to be a movie director. It's a beautiful profession, but no more than to be a cartoon writer. A very rich cartoon writer. I've done a lot of films, and I know deeply that, in all of cinema, there is no director who is as good as Shakespeare.

Of all the things about de Sade, I would argue he is funny. A lot of people didn't understand de Sade. No. 1, he is a very good writer, and No. 2, he had the courage to talk about a lot of things that in public, even now, almost nobody has the courage to talk about. He would do it with a kind of funny way - not the stories themselves, but the way he tells them. He is never serious.

I love cinema. It is the most important thing to me. Life is cinema. It has been this way since I was a child of about 14, and I was going every day to see the movies.

I don't think I've made good movies. I've just made some movies more disgusting than others.

I don't care about being remembered. I'm not a wonderful writer or anything. This should be reserved for people who really did something great. I think it's a mistake to consider the movie director as if they were great artists.

In English, you can find writers with a wonderful sense of humor, like Oscar Wilde. But in the French language, this is very special, and de Sade is one of the very brave writers with a sense of humor. But most people don't understand that. When they read de Sade, they take it seriously. They say, "Oh, what an awful man!" He is really a very unknown writer.