“He is still my favourite author, and he is the one – I still think – who writes most honestly about human existence.”

It is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.

There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work.

One of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film.

It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.

If you want to be a great director, be a great screenwriter.

I am not a special person, I am not especially strong; I am not especially gifted.

I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’

During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set.

I have no idea who the characters are, later, their personalities take over anything I might want to do.

Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working.

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.

If I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take ‘myself,’ subtract ‘movies,’ and the result is ‘zero.’

I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with.

When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film.

The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses.

Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.

Of the authors writing in English, I’d mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I’m afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.

This fear is one of the horrors of an author’s life. Where does work come from? What chance, what small episode will start the chain of creation?

I’m not a military general, a business guru, not a philosopher or author. It’s only me.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.

Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?