“I had a world. I don’t think I had a career. I made films.”

I go back to many films that I really love.

Hands are the tool of the painter, the artist.

I never fought, I never learned kung fu or boxing, I never went into these sportif competitions. I wouldn’t cross the ocean.

I did not think that woman would be restrained. I never saw that, especially not in filmmaking, where you don’t have to be strong.

I was nineteen and I put a bowl on and I said, Cut around! Because it was not the fashion at the time when I did that hairdo – and I kept it all my life!

I call [ordinary people] real people, because they have in themselves an incredible treasure – stories, a way of speaking, a way of sharing, an innocence and a perversity which I find very interesting to discover little by little.

I think I got people confidence because I was not looking at them like insects that I would film.

People like my films. They understand me through my films; it’s like a connection that has been established between all my work and myself and the audience and the viewer.

I don’t watch my own films. There is little time; I’d rather see another film.

Society is so slow. A feminist is a bore.

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

I wanted to catch the problem of consumption, waste, poor people eating what we throw away, which is a big subject. But I didn’t want to become a sociologue, an ethnographe, a serious thinker. I thought I should be free, even in a documentary which has a very serious subject.

I see all these students, and I admire them – they’re trying to learn something, they go to school, they do film school, they go on shoots, they help.

I didn’t go to film school. I was never an assistant or trainee on a film. I had not seen all those cameras. So I think it gave me a lot of freedom.

I should say nothing! I’m through with it! I hate to repeat myself all the time.

It’s a way of living, sharing things with people who work with me, and they seem to enjoy it.

But I think it’s a good thing. Some people thought that it was an odd career arc, but to me it made absolute sense.

I see the friends I made over the years who have become family today, people I became acquainted with who have achieved so much in their lives. They taught me something with each meeting.

I want to be remembered as a man who was positive, who made a difference, and who walked in God’s light.

We made sure that we didn’t talk about India versus Pakistan but about the emotions of people on both sides and how terrorism affects us all.

Jerry Rice made the decision and we honestly tried to accommodate him the best way we can.

A film made in this spirit reveals the hearts of the crew.

I have always made it a point to know our employees, to visit every facility of our company, and to try to meet and know every single employee.

For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.