I like to hide my camera and use a remote control, because then no one knows when I'm actually imprisoning their souls in the visual plane of thought or just sitting there, waiting, and then making time stop. The printed film is like a bell used to symbolize its hour. Except it stands for both that hour's and everything's sudden stopping.

"Utter truth is essential, and that is what stirs me when I look through the camera."

Even while you're in dead earnest about your work, you must approach it with a feeling of freedom and joy; you must be loose-jointed, like a relaxed athlete.

I'm afraid my closely guarded solitude causes some hurt feelings now and then. But how to explain, without wounding someone, that you want to be wholly in the world you are writing about, that it would take two days to get the visitor's voice out of the house so that you could listen to your own characters again?

The very secret of life for me, I believed, was to maintain in the midst of rushing events an inner tranquility.

If anyone gets in my way when I'm making a picture, I become irrational. I'm never sure what I am going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do-only that I want that picture.

The element of discovery is very important. I don't repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another.