We made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.

If you've noticed that I don't use long takes, it's not because I don't like them, but because no one gives me the necessary means to treat myself to them. It's more economical to make one image, then this image and then that image, and try to control them later, in the editing studio.

There are a thousand ways of playing a good classic. If it were effective, I would play Hamlet on a trapeze.

Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of.

Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.

n Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.