The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.

Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.