The ear is profound, whereas the eye is frivolous, too easily satisfied. The ear is active, imaginative, whereas the eye is passive. When you hear a noise at night, instantly you imagine its cause. The sound of a train whistle conjures up the whole station. The eye can perceive only what is presented to it.

The crude real will not by itself yield truth.

The things one can express with the hand, with the head, with the shoulders!... How many useless and encumbering words then disappear! What economy!

For me, film-making is combining images and sounds of real things in an order that makes them effective. What I disapprove of is photographing things that are not real. Sets and actors are not real.

Unbalance so as to re-balance.

In the NUDE, all that is not beautiful is obscene.

Ten properties of an object, according to Leonardo: light and dark, color and substance, form and position, distance and nearness, movement and stillness.