I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience.

I've often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it's inside a frame.

Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect.

Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.

A movie is about human beings, about humanity.

In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.

Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can't limit it to one particular culture.

Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can't believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I'm interested in.

My way of expression is full of complications and mystery because that's my perception of life.

I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. To say that would mean I'm just marketing my work!

I spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does.

Many of the women in Los Angeles are part of the notorious gang culture, and they will forever have my gratitude for, you know, letting me live.

And truth is malleable, something to be bent or stretched or made to disappear, but direct lies always find the path back to the one who tells them.

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary and nothing but what is necessary.

To the Pilgrim Mothers, who not only had their full share of the hardships and privations of pioneer life but also had the Pilgrim Fathers to endure.

I have friends who vote Tory, and I'm appalled, but that's not to say they're not great people in so many other ways.

Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.

I think anyone who is a carnivore needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages.

A state of mind is something that one assumes. It cannot be purchased, it must be created.