But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important.

To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it's for them.

I guess George Clooney would be a wonderful silent actor, and Leonardo DiCaprio is such a wonderful actor he certainly could do it.

I only have one obsession - not to be boring.

If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know.

I guess all the directors in France are influenced by Hitchcock, because he's the perfect visual director, in my eyes.

I am unusual for a Frenchman - I have absolutely nothing against the United States.

Sometimes when an actor says something almost perfect, but you know you have to edit it, if you tell them to change something immediately, it will come out great

I make almost all the decisions on set and have to deal with all the financial aspects.

I want to thank three person: I want to thank Billy Wilder. I want to thank Billy Wilder. And I want to thank Billy Wilder.

French cinema audiences usually don't express anything. Certainly not satisfaction.

Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.

A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.

It is lack of communication that leads to unhappy marriage.

The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service to the community their highest life problem.

A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.

A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.

On social networking sites, we may expose ourselves, but we choose to do so. We are in control and, often wrongly, we do not feel we are giving away tradable data.

Surround yourself with people you want to be around.

I always think under par. You have to believe in yourself.