“Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.”

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.

I can’t say I’m thankful about being German because I sometimes experience it as a huge burden. But it is an integral part of me and I wouldn’t want to escape it. I have accepted it.

I can’t say I’m thankful about being German because I sometimes experience it as a huge burden. But it is an integral part of me and I wouldn’t want to escape it. I have accepted it.

I sometimes compare press officers to riflemen on the Somme — mowing down wave upon wave of distortion, taking out rank upon rank of supposition, deduction and gossip.

Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.

Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings.

Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth

I’m not from a particularly sci-fi background. I’m not anti sci-fi at all, but I’ve never been known as a sci-fi writer and, suddenly, I was creating a flagship BBC sci-fi show, which is terrifying sometimes.

I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.