Start with scout locations first.

Filmmaking is to me very similar to being in a café somewhere in Paris and looking at the people walking by.

I always scout locations first. The apartments, the railway tracks, the café, the canal - I figure out the geography of the film.

I'm an anxious person. What I like best is to smoke cigarettes and listen to music. A perfect day for me is a day with coffee, cigarettes, and music, to quote Jim Jarmusch.

Freedom is not having a big budget.

I don't think I make genre movies. There is a certain type of violence in my films but I think I have my own genre because I made it happen like that.

My mother's father was from Brazil - a painter, and not a famous one - and was always broke. But he was a free spirit, a great grandfather.

'White Material' is about courage and craziness.

Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.

Cheap, fast and reliable, the definition of vehicle gold.

History is past politics and politics present history.

It's a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I've never had any trouble identifying with the character that I'm playing.

I was two years old when my mom put me in mommy and me classes. I always had a lot of energy so it was the perfect fit!

The ultimate end...is not knowledge, but action. To be half right on time may be more important than to obtain the whole truth too late.

If you make a mistake, then you should own that mistake.

My 20s was a sea of worry. I worried about benefit forms, about being thrown out of my flat. I never went on holiday because I thought: 'What if an audition comes up?' I was a nervous wreck.

First to become capable of love, then to learn that body and spirit are one.

How do you tell a child that she was born to be hurt?