I don't want the director to have to make any decisions except to say "action" and "cut."

I'm really a nightmare for the fashion designer because I take away all of his authority, and I become the authority, and I turn him into my assistant. You could say I intervene, and I intervene in a very determining way in all the aspects that have to do with the visual construction of the film.

If I had not been successful as a director, then I'm sure I would still be telling stories. I would have continued on 16mm or found a different medium through which to tell them. Maybe they would have been less glamorous than films, but I would continue to tell stories.

When I'm writing, I don't put faces on the characters. When I finish the first draft of the script, I start visualizing, and sometimes then I think about one actor.

When I was very young, I was already a fabulador. I loved to give my own version of stories that everybody already knew. When I got out of a movie with my sisters, I retold them the whole story. In general they liked my version better than the one they had seen.

I was born at a bad time for Spain, but a really good one for cinema.

Never again work in the same conditions in whichyou made your first film. It's good to take risks, but not thatmuch risk.