“Anything I’ve not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.”

There were years when Hitchcock was like a master to me, but now I think he’s so artificial. I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I’m not impressed by any technicality.

I did not have a script [of Close Up]. I made notes in the evenings and we filmed during the day over 40 days.I didn’t sleep a wink for those 40 nights.

Silence doesn’t seem heavy or difficult.

I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. To say that would mean I’m just marketing my work!

It seems that film-makers are being divided between those working in digital and those who are not. I think it’s not something predetermined – it all depends on what project we have in mind, and on that basis we choose the medium.

Those same people, when they leave the theater, when they look behind the curtains they are curious about their neighbors, they can guess if their neighbors are siblings or a couple, how old they are, what their occupation is.

I do believe that a film like Ten could never have been made with a 35mm camera. The first part of the film lasts 17 minutes, and by the end of that part, the kid has totally forgotten the camera.

I have a picture from the end of the shoot, and in it I have lost all my hair.

I don’t have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who’s in my mind in reality.

I wasn’t searching for a common denominator – I started wondering about the challenge of working in other cultures. What I reached was the sudden acknowledgment of the universal aspect of filmmaking.

Close-Up is a very particular film in my oeuvre. It’s a film that was made in a very particular way; mainly because I didn’t really have the time to think about how to go about making the film.

Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can’t believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I’m interested in.

My car’s my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We’re in the most comfortable seats because we’re not facing each other, but sitting side by side.

It’s very true that non-actors feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crowd around them, and we arrive at much more intimate moments with them.

I really haven’t seen The Report in a long time. I don’t have a copy, but I’ll have to see it again. I think it would be good to put both these men next to each other.

I think that if you’re a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.

If a master, a wise and experienced man, wields a great weapon, that’s beautiful. He can serve peace with it. But if someone’s emotions are imbalanced, even if he has the best equipment,

Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.

True Meditation is the space in which everything gets revealed, everything gets seen, everything gets experienced. And as such, it lets go of itself. We don’t even let go. It lets go of itself.

Have you noticed, with whatever quality of love you have experienced, that when true love arises, it opens up both your mind and emotions? It’s an openness to whatever is happening.

My teacher used to say ‘all love is bittersweet’. All things experienced fully, reveal their opposite.

What they wanted was something newly experienced, and therefore unknown and hard to attain.

No one who has experienced facing a screaming, boiling, hysterical audience can avoid feeling shivers in the spine. It’s a thin line between celebration and menace.

I think talented people are priceless. And I think people that are knowledgeable and experienced – and I think there’s a balance of new talent and experience, which makes, I think, Estee Lauder really special.