The cinema is not a craft. It is an art. It does not mean teamwork. One is always alone on the set as before the blank page. And to be alone... means to ask questions. And to make films means to answer them.

Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion.

We once believed we were auteurs, but we weren't. We had no idea, really. Film is over. It's sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur.

The idea is to make the script out of a political analysis and then to convey that - sometimes in poetry, sometimes science, sometimes all it takes is a film. The film itself is less and less spectacular because I think very strongly now the more spectacular you are, the more you are absorbed by the things you are trying to destroy.

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.

A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

I don't think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can't kiss a movie.

Once I had seen 'Journey to Italy,' I knew that, even if I were never to make movies, I could make them.

To be or not to be. That's not really a question.