“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

I’m never certain of a performance – my own or the other actors’ – or the script or anything. But to me it seems there’s only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.

Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It’s the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore.

I’ve spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I’m not irresponsible.

The Godfather’ was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they’re talking.

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.

A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents.

I’m one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour – and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.

The director is the most overrated artist in the world. He is the only artist who, with no talent whatsoever, can be a success for 50 years without his lack of talent ever being discovered.

The most personal thing I’ve put in [Touch of Evil] is my hatred of the abuse of police power. It’s better to see a murderer go free than for a policeman to abuse his power.

The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.

Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.

I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.

We always live for the summer until we don’t live it at all.

We have a planetary emergency. We have to find a way to create, in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.

It’s that engagement of learning that makes us feel alive.

If we learn to love the earth, we will find labyrinths, gardens, fountains and precious jewels! A whole new world will open itself to us. We will discover what it means to be truly alive.

As far as I’ve been alive, women have always been more or less the symbol of sexuality rather than the male. We don’t see the naked male body, as the symbol of sex.

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.

You are only here now; you’re only alive in this moment.

Do not bring flowers to my grave. Bring them to someone who is yet alive.