“I accept all interpretations of my films. The only reality is before the camera. Each film I make is kind of a return to poetry for me, or at least an attempt to create a poem.”

There was a sense of future that was the result of the mixture of politics, cinema, music, the first joints. And the movies were a very important part of that cocktail.

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting Last Tango in Paris, I was thinking I was doing a political film.

You live day by day. You can’t build your life.

English dialogues are always just what you need and nothing more – like something out of Hemingway. In Italian and in French, dialogues are always theatrical, literary. You can do more with it.

The life before ’68 was very different from the life after ’68. Before ’68, our days were full of authoritarian moments. There were authorities everywhere. In fact, the movement of ’68 was young people against their authorities, children against their parents. And that remained.

Pornography is not in the hands of the child who discovers his sexuality by masturbating, but in the heart of the adult who slaps him.

I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.

For example, Jewish directors coming from Germany or Austria and enriching Hollywood. In 15, 20 years, Hollywood became imperialistic. Cinema goes ahead when it is marriaged by other culture. Otherwise, it turns on itself.

I think that what I learned then, I didn’t know I was learning. I just knew that I was very privileged to see somebody who was a writer, a great poet, and very smart-faced. Suddenly Pasolini becomes a director, so he has to invent cinema.

I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. ‘The Dreamers’ was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.

A dolly move is a moral commitment.

To explore technology for me is something that I have to do. Otherwise, I feel completely left in the back… abandoned.

I don’t see my movies. I think it’s healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I’m afraid to be disappointed.

I was seduced by the nouvelle vague, because it was really reinventing everything. And the Italian cinema that one would see in the theaters in the late ’50s, early ’60s was Italian comedy, Italian style, which, to me, was like the end of neo-realism.

I like to be in a huis clos, as the French say – in one place. It’s something that in general can create a bit of claustrophobia. But for me, claustrophobia becomes almost immediately claustrophilia. I love it!

If New York is the Big Apple, tonight Hollywood is the Big Nipple.

What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.

I’m very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.

It really is a pleasure to work with someone who you admire. Whatever you do in front of the camera, and I don’t know what it is, but actors have this thing that you recognize someone that makes you better. When you do that, it’s a great feeling.

I generally prefer to stay quiet before a performance. I don’t like television cameras, but an interview is OK.

I had no education in filmmaking. I started with a 8mm camera. I made 34 films, and little by little I gained more experience in filming.

I’ve fallen down crevasses, been bitten by snakes, been knocked unconscious, had various limbs broken and once, a heavy camera came plunging down which very nearly decapitated me.

Here’s the beauty of a camera: you don’t have to come up with words for what you’re looking at… Maybe another angle is needed sometimes. When we’re burned out from writing, we can photograph or draw, look at the world in a different way, and photographers could try writing what they see.

…I use primal imagery, so maybe it’s fitting that I use the most primitive of cameras [pinhole cameras]. Since there’s no viewfinder, the image is much more of a surprise – as if some outsider came and looked at earth for the first time.