For me, good films and good books are irreducible to a lesson. You can't just kind of translate them into one statement. On the contrary, the more you do that, the less wisdom in art there is.

We made a film about the need for silence and withdrawal... and here we are at the epicentre of noise and excitement. Life is full of surprises.

I'm a pretty chaotic person, but I'm also a perfectionist. It's a very unfortunate mix.

I usually make films about what's on my mind at any given time.

I never work from the script. I get the script more or less.

It's always a good starting point to tell a story that has many layers.

I never made films like kind of career moves, like making this film in order to make that film in order to end up in Hollywood.

The changes are part of my writing process. When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.

'Ida' is about humanity, about guilt and forgiveness. It's not a film that deals with an issue as such. It's more universal.

Your environment and the associations you keep will affect how you think, feel, and act, and ultimately the results you get.

But every day I go to work I'm making a bet that the universe is simple, symmetric, and aesthetically pleasing—a universe that we humans, with our limited perspective, will someday understand.

If a man harbors any sort of fear it percolates through all his thinking damages his personality makes him landlord to a ghost.

I never let my politics supersede my manners.

Art is a universal language and through it each nation makes its own unique contribution to the culture of mankind.

He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum

It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.

Women attribute their success to working hard, luck, and help from other people. Men will attribute that - whatever success they have, that same success - to their own core skills.

My only job has been to say that you have to, try different things and let yourself become a different person, have experiences.

I'm male. You rubbed your...femaleness all over me. I didn't think. I reacted.