I didn't want [actress] just to be a woman standing at the window, waving hello and goodbye to men as they came and went in the world that they were struggling through. I wanted her to have a true function.

Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear. And I beg them not to imitate me, because I'm not a good actor.

Virginia Woolf was one example. She was called the "Lover of 100 Gangsters."

The important thing is to make a different world, to make a world that is not now. A real world, a genuine world, but one that allows myth to live. The myth is everything.

When one goes to see Modern Times, for instance, one understands much more about socialism than listening to the man who was then head of the Socialist movement in Italy.

America is so varied and exciting that after six months, you go back and find it completely changed.

There was also the myth of the western films. But my films are borrowed not from the story of the West in America but from the story of cinema.