I'm twelve years old. I run into a synagogue. I ask the rabbi the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life but he tells it to me in Hebrew. I don't understand Hebrew. Then he wants to charge me $600 for Hebrew lessons.

If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job.

American films, it's a money-making industry. And in France, you can find great respect for cinema as art.

All the crap they tell you about... getting joy and having a kind of wisdom in your golden years - it's all tripe.

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.

Life is full of moments that are good - winning a lottery, seeing a beautiful woman, a great dinner - but the whole thing is tragic. It's an oasis that is very pleasant.

Never shoot up in the air when you're standing under it.