“To be an artist means to search, to find and look at these realities. To be an artist means never to look away.”

Man is a genius when he dreams. Dream what you are capable of. The harder you dream it, the sooner it will come true.

The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something.

Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one.

I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I’ve liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film.

Take me, subtract movies, and you get zero.

They don’t know it, but they’re losing nature. They don’t see that they’re going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.

If you look at everything straight on, there is nothing to be afraid of.

By doing this I sense instantly when something isn’t right. Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way.

I like silent pictures and I always have … I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way.

I simply do not like to show my weakness, and I hate to lose, so I am a person who tries hard. That’s all there is to me.

I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good.

Page 61: No matter where I go in the world, although I can’t speak any foreign language.

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people.

In a mad world only the mad are sane.

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they’ve been given.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

I’m tough when I have to be, tender when I should be. When you find a really tough guy, he’s not a predator. He doesn’t have to prove himself.

We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

A lot of people can find something to laugh at in my humor, I guess.

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

If you can be mentally stimulated by the workout and find out how to get through it, it’s more fun.