“I don’t try to make a place in history at all! People put me in the history of cinema because my first film, La pointe-courte, was so ahead of some other filmmakers.”

We got along very well without trying to make me look like I’m what I’m not.

I had flops, I had success.

Just yesterday I saw a good film, but even if I’d seen a bad one, I’d feel, “Oh my god, what a bad job, I can do better.”

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.

The structure of my novels has nothing to do with the narrative mode of cinema. My novels would be very difficult to film without ruining them completely.

I live in cinema. I feel I’ve lived here forever.

When I started my first film, there were three women directors in France. Their films were OK, but I was different. It’s like when you start to jump and you put the pole very high – you have to jump very high. I thought, I have to use cinema as a language.

Good cinema is good cinema. It makes you feel like you need to work.

What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out.

The future of cinema and communications is all about collaboration and the decentralized control of storytelling.

Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science.

Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science.