“In a mad world only the mad are sane.”

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.

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.

The great appeal of film is its relatability.

One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas.

I have to live my life. I have a family and I just think it’s absurd to let other people influence the way you live.

To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.

Success make these people mad I know how it is.

A madman’s ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.

Yes, I am here. And you are lucky to be here too after all the absurd things you’ve done since you left home.

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.