I really don't know anything about music, and it's no great experience for me. But I do think that music has a purifying element.

For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you.

I believe the life of every person is worthy of scrutiny, containing its own secrets and dramas.

I have one good characteristic: I'm a pessimist, so I always imagine the worst - always. To me, the future is a black hole.

Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.

There are mysteries, secret zones in each individual.

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

This man (Bergman) is one of the few film directors-perhaps the only one in the world-to have said as much about human nature as Dostoevsky or Camus.

Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking?

I like chance meetings - life is full of them. Every day, without realising it, I pass people whom I should know.

The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film.

Artists rarely do the same thing over and over again. Art is about the new, doing things in a new way.

Screenwriting and making movies is really playing make-believe like most of us did as children.

There is no art without intoxication. But I mean a mad intoxication! Let reason teeter! Delirium!

Speaking to a lawyer about pictures is something like talking to a butcher about humanity.

You have to love your work. You have to save money instead of spending all of it. Look for areas you can compete in. Work damn hard. Most importantly, you have to love it.

Accumulate, accumulate! This is Moses and the Prophets!

Until now, I've been a kind of binge-writer - I'll carve out five or six hours on a weekend day and make a large container of espresso and just bang out a lot of words.

Everyone is tortured. Do you know anyone who isn't?

I never analyze why I was with one woman instead of another.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.