“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.”

It’s nice to think that we have in ourselves the energy. It’s somewhere, but it’s sleeping sometimes. I try to wake it up when I need it.

I didn’t see films when I was young. I was stupid and naïve. Maybe I wouldn’t have made films if I had seen lots of others; maybe it would have stopped me.

I tried to find images, allegorical images, that I could use to express things that I didn’t want to say or didn’t want to show or I was not able to find how to show.

In my films I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.

Sometimes I say, If I had seen some masterpieces, maybe I wouldn’t have dared start. I started very – not innocent, but naïve in a way.

I’ve always been like this – trying to find adventure where it’s still in its first élan – the first spring.

Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer. Women have to make jokes about themselves, laugh about themselves, because they have nothing to lose.

People know it’s not easy, and even though you have strong feeling and desire and endless love, it doesn’t always happen.

You can buy a good pasta but when you cook it yourself it has another feeling.

My grandson says I’m punk.

I need images, I need representation which deals in other means than reality. We have to use reality but get out of it. That’s what I try to do all the time.

I’d been educated stupidly, I knew nothing about nothing, that’s part of being shy.

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.

Many filmmakers have made resurgent work, and I was just a little ahead of the time.

To share a lot of ideas – not ideas – emotions, a way of looking at people, a way of looking at life. If it can be shared, it means there is a common denominator.

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.

I hope you never doubt again that even when you are in pain, that you are a miracle, that every part of you is incredible.

It’s a coup by the GOP to grab the governorship to California to make this place a safe haven for George W. Bush in 2004. It’s incredible when you think about it. The recall cost the state $100 million

Technology is an incredible tool – it connects people to each other.

I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it – incredibly.

You are an incredible mystery that you will never figure out. To be this mystery consciously is the greatest joy.

I’m barely prolific and incredibly lazy.

Mary J. Blige is the Queen Latifah character. Her voice in this movie [Rock of ages] is, she just gives it this incredible warmth, and she’s just this person who blows out of the screen. She’s just incredible.

That was another incredible thing: the opportunity to be in Greenland, a place I had read about in NatGeo a decade before.