When I see a good film, it's like a whiplash. I run away, in order not to be influenced. Thus, the films I liked most are those I think least about.

I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society .... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.

I'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit.

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.

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