I rarely feel the desire to reread a scene the day before the shooting. Sometimes I arrive at the place where the work is to be done and I do not even know what I am going to shoot. This is the system I prefer: to arrive at the moment when shooting is about to begin, absolutely unprepared, virgin. I often ask to be left alone on the spot for fifteen minutes or half an hour and I let my thoughts wander freely.

I simply know what the actor's attitude should be and what he should say. He doesn't, because he can't see the relationship that begins to exist between his body and the other things in the scene.

The struggle for life is not only the material and economic one. Comfort is no protection from anxiety.

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

When I'm sure I have a story, I call my collaborators and we begin to discuss it. And we conduct studies of certain subjects to make sure of our terrain. Then, finally, in the last month or two, I write the story.

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

I can't give any absolute definition of what love is, or even whether it ought to exist.