To me, it's far more efficient to mobilize the imagination. It's far more efficient to hear a creaking step, for example, than to see the face of a monster, which usually looks ridiculous, and where you know that the blood is ketchup.

I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

The trouble is that when you read criticisms about the other films that I've made you get the impression that they're all about themes, or problems, or ideas. But those are actually things that develop out of characters, out of images and out of other things. These more abstract things develop while working on the material, and out of it. It's not a theoretical exercise from the outset.

If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie.

Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.

I consider all my films an experiment, at least in my mind.

It's a disease of critics that once they've labeled someone, it's very hard to change their perspective. It's laziness.