Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are.

Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.

A too-expected image (cliché) will never seem right, even if it is.

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

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

To create is not to deform or invent persons and things. It is to tie new relationships between persons and things which are, and as they are.

Empty the pond to get the fish.