As for the "anger" of the volcano, we leave it up to the local populations who create their demons, their gods and their divine punishment.

Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species—including man—crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.

My contacts with the film industry can be described in very simple terms: The industry does not really need me, and I do not really need the industry.

If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn't be right at such a moment.

It was a subject [ volcanoes] that was dormant in me for a long time and it popped up 40 years ago when I made a [short] film on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe about a volcano that was about to explode and a single farmer refused to leave ["La Soufrière"].

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

I've never left my culture. I've left my country, but I've not left my culture. In the same way, you shouldn't be worried why George Lucas is going to the outer galaxy to make a movie. He's still making a film within his culture; he's making an American film. I go to Thailand or the Peruvian jungle, the Amazon, and I still make Bavarian films.