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

I've made films about the middle classes because I know them best. Everyone talks about what he knows best.

The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.

Actors are always a little high at work. Acting is their drug. So when you put the brakes on, they're naturally a little disappointed.

When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him.

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.

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about.