“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!”

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.

We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more.

She almost doesn’t recognize her children, but she recites Valéry and Baudelaire. So what? We’re the ones who are suffering. She’s not.

I’m still fighting. I don’t know how much longer, but I’m still fighting a struggle, which is to make cinema alive and not just make another film.

I think people should be different. I love people who don’t go by the rule that you have to be careful because you’re old, you have to do this and that, you have to eat this and that.

But in a way we all have a Mona. We all have inside ourselves a woman who walks alone on the road. In all women there is something in revolt that is not expressed.

It’s a way of living, cinema. And I see my family, I do this and that, I travel. It’s a long process to let it happen.

I’m trying to capture something more fragile than a regular story. I love what people bring me.

The film critics don’t know my artwork and the art world doesn’t know my films.

You know, an hour and fifty-four minutes is too much for audiences. They get nervous.