A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

Innovation comes spontaneously. I don't know if I've done anything new. If I have, it's just because I had begun to feel for some time that I couldn't stand certain films, certain modes, certain ways of telling a story, certain tricks of plot development, all of it predictable and useless.

That love is a conflict seems to me obvious and natural. There isn't a single worthwhile work in world literature based on love that is only about the conquest of happiness, the effort to arrive at what we call love. It's the struggle that has always interested those who produce works of art - literature, cinema or poetry.

Everyone has understood me in his own way. But I would have to understand myself first in order to judge - and so far, I haven't.

The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying.

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.