I believe that sex is a beautiful thing between two people. Between five, it's fantastic.

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.

I failed to make the chess team because of my height.

I'm very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

The film studios learned to our dismay but to their pleasure that if they spent $200 million making a film they could make half a billion on it. So they were not interested anymore in quality films... They can't afford to be that risky at those prices. Consequently you're getting a lot of remakes, sequels, dopey comedies full of toilet jokes...

Figures tell us there are already more people on earth than we need to move even the heaviest piano.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

I think being funny is not anyone's first choice.

I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.

I'm a comedian. I make comic films and there are certain ideas that occur to me that are comic, with heavy, serious undertones. There are some ideas that are more frivolous to me. The next idea that could occur to me could be comedy about death and famine or something.

My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done.

You make films whether they're dramas or comedies about neurotic people. Flawed people. Interesting personality traits. To make them about calm, stable untroubled people isn't interesting.

I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon.

The comedies are not a million laughs on the set. Its business and the dramas are business as well, really. When I'm writing it I struggle more with drama because I started out in comedy.

I'd always wanted to be a dramatic. Comedy comes more naturally to me. I can do it with more facility. So I feel more comfortable with it.

Music has always helped my films. In 'The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion,' you can hear 'Sunrise' by Glenn Miller, an idol of my childhood, in the surprise ending. I like mixing comedy with suspense and action.

It seems to me that making escapist films might be a better service to people than making intellectual ones and making films that deal with issues. It might be better to just make escapist comedies that don't touch on any issues. The people just get a cool lemonade, and then they go out refreshed, they enjoy themselves, they forget how awful things are and it helps them - it strengthens them to get through the day.

I'm generally not a social dramatist or comedy writer. My interests have always been more in psychological stories or personal relations and comic ideas.

I like broad comedy. If I had an idea tomorrow for a film that was all slapstick and broad comedy, and it was an idea that interested me, I would not hesitate to do it because I enjoy watching these kinds of film.

I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.

I'm not a big believer in the sense of Jews having a monopoly on comedy.

People think I'm an artist because my films lose money.

If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job.

You make a film and always hope you're going make "Citizen Kane" or "The Bicycle Thief." You make the film, and for one reason or another, one clicks and one doesn't, but it's out of your control completely.

My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.

I do the movies just for myself like an institutionalized person who basket-weaves. Busy fingers are happy fingers. I don't care about the films. I don't care if they're flushed down the toilet after I die.

American films, it's a money-making industry. And in France, you can find great respect for cinema as art.

The film studios learned to our dismay but to their pleasure that if they spent $200 million making a film they could make half a billion on it. So they were not interested anymore in quality films... They can't afford to be that risky at those prices. Consequently you're getting a lot of remakes, sequels, dopey comedies full of toilet jokes...

If my films don't show a profit, I know I'm doing something right.

I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.

I can understand that an audience, buying a ticket to see a picture of mine, wants to see something funny because they feel confident that at least I have a fighting chance to make a funny film when I make a film, whereas if I make a dramatic film there's one chance in a thousand that it's really going to come out great, so I understand how they feel about that and they're completely right.

My films are misinterpreted all the time. I don't mind that. Everybody's films are misinterpreted. But there's no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them.

A general philosophy of the female characters in my films is they all want something to believe in, and not having anything.

Film is more of novelty, because I've done so much theater over many years. I'm in love with making movies. Also, I find it easier to remember three minutes of dialogue than three hours.

The French make two mistakes about me. They think I'm an intellectual because I wear these glasses and they think I'm an artist because my films lose money.

My films are a form of psychoanalysis, except that it is I who am paid, which changes everything.

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.

To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.

If I was to see any of my films now I would feel, oh god you know it's awful I could do that so much better now. Look at all the terrible things I did and all the mistakes and all the compromises and all the blunders I made, and it would be such a terrible experience for me to see them. So it's better that I put it out and move on to the next thing and make it history as quickly as possible.

New York is my home and I have a particular fondness for it. I think it's a place where you can generate any kind of story wonderfully. But I also would be very happy to make a film in Paris or Rome.

It seems to me that making escapist films might be a better service to people than making intellectual ones and making films that deal with issues. It might be better to just make escapist comedies that don't touch on any issues. The people just get a cool lemonade, and then they go out refreshed, they enjoy themselves, they forget how awful things are and it helps them - it strengthens them to get through the day.

I can make films. And some of them come out good, and some of them come out better, and some of them come out worse. But I've been very lucky over the years to be able to sustain the length of career that I've had.

Throughout history in the theater and film people do like sarcastic characters, and they do like curmudgeons - if they're amusing, they do like them despite the fact that they're vitriolic, particularly if they're for the right thing. If you can see that the person is a decent person and is for the right thing, and is not just a nasty person with base motives, but someone who is a decent human but expresses himself.

I never start editing a film until it's completely shot; I don't edit along the way, ever. When it's finished I come in here [screening room] and we start with reel one, scene one and start editing shot by shot by shot until we're finished.

My relationship with American audiences is the exact same as it always has been. They never came to see my films, and they don't come now.

As an artist, you are always striving toward an ultimate achievement but never seem to reach it. You shoot a film, and the result could have always been better. You try again, and fail once more. In some ways I find it enjoyable. You never lose sight of your goal. I don’t do my job to make money or to break box office records, I simply try things out. What would happen if I were to achieve perfection at some point? What would I do then?

I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.