The women I like, no matter what nationality, all seem to have more or less the same qualities. Perhaps this is because one goes looking for them - that is, you like that type of woman and then look for her.

The script is a starting point, not a fixed highway. I must look through the camera to see if what I've written on the page is right or not. In the script, you describe imagined scenes, but it's all suspended in mid-air. Often, an actor viewed against a wall or a landscape, or seen through a window, is much more eloquent than the lines you've given him. So then you take out the lines. This happens often to me and I end up saying what I want with a movement or a gesture.

Method actors are absolutely terrible. They want to direct themselves, and it's a disaster.

It's only human and natural that an actor should see the film in terms of his own part, but I, as a director, have to see the film as a whole. He must therefore collaborate selflessly, totally.

All I know is that we are loaded down with old and stale stuff - habits, customs, old attitudes already dead and gone.

Favourite directors change, like favorite authors. I had a passion for Gide and Stein and Faulkner. But now they're no use to me anymore. I've assimilated them - so, enough, they are a closed chapter. This also applies to film directors.

I read somewhere that happiness is like the bluebird of Maeterlinck: Try to catch it and it loses its color. It's like trying to hold water in your hands. The more you squeeze it, the more the water runs away.