“Even Vagabond – it was a fiction but it was really a documentary. I mean, it has the texture of documentary. Even if I made up every line, it has the texture of being true.”

The story of a couple is always very fragile, especially over more than thirty years.

I’m not nostalgic. My memories are back here in my mind.

I’m sure they learn a lot, and some of them, it makes them aware of what they wish to do. I was – that’s the way I was – autodidact.

I’ve seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don’t do commercials,

The boundaries between contemporary art and cinema are so rigid. It’s unbelievable.

Some Bresson, some Godard of the early times, the Cassavetes of those years I love. And the early Wim Wenders. But my own films I don’t watch, unless I need them.

The mirror is the tool of the one who wants to do a self-portrait. And if you want to make a photo you need a mirror.

I was a photographer first.I worked alone. I did it my way as much as I could. I have been sort of courageous about doing things, because I didn’t think I should do less than my brothers.

I had beautiful jewelery around me, and when I lost I would take the jewelery and say, Service – being very generous, because it was very expensive jewelery. I would say, Tip.

I think it’s ridiculous to take such risk. But look, people love to do that. But I was not afraid of doing things I wished to do.

To change history is very slow. The first two times I came to the States – black people didn’t have the right to vote.

I don’t believe in inspiration that arrives like a bolt from the blue … It seems to me that the more motivated I am by what I film, the more objectively I film.

I’m interested in people who are not exactly the middle way, or who are trying something else because they cannot prevent themselves from being different, or they wish to be different, or they are different because society pushed them away.

We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more.

She almost doesn’t recognize her children, but she recites Valéry and Baudelaire. So what? We’re the ones who are suffering. She’s not.

I’m still fighting. I don’t know how much longer, but I’m still fighting a struggle, which is to make cinema alive and not just make another film.