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

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.

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.

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.

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

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...

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

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.

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

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.

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

He is neither a strategist nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general. Other than that he's a great military man.

“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us” 

“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us” 

“The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.” 

“Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.”

“The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.” 

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.” 

“The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.”

Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them.

My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies, Fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die, I can fly, my friends...

Let silence be the art you practice

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.