There have been innumerable films about film-making, but Otto e Mezzo was a film about the processes of thinking about making a film -- certainly the most enjoyable part of any cinema creation.

I've always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you've been, where you are, and where you're going -- in a sense it's three tenses in one.

I have always had severe problems with Austrians. ... Musical, churchy, uptight... nice legs... hypocritical... authoritarian... always insist their dustbins are very clean.

I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

I really, sincerely believe that one should trust the work, and not the author.

You can play lacrosse all over the world provided you know where the goalposts are.

I wanted to make a cinema of ideas, not plots, and to use the same aesthetics as painting, which has always paid great attention to formal devices of structure, composition and framing.

Works of art are never finished, just stopped.

Every historian has a vested interest. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was not about the Roman but the British empire. What price the truth?

I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium.

Only cinema narrows its concern down to its content, that is to its story. It should, instead, concern itself with its form, its structure.

May the living have hope.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other. It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn't mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

At the door of every happy person there should be a man with a hammer whose knock would serve as a constant reminder of the existence of unfortunate people.

The contrived language and the flattering attitude rarely come with the virtue.

If I'm feeling tired, I just say, 'I'm going to paint my nails purple and put some lipstick on!'

A girl's got to be fun. It's the one bit of advice I always give to friends of mine who are thinking of getting married.

I am always looking for what I think are original voices.

The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.

So I have talked with Betsey and Betsey has talked with me, And we have agreed together that we can't never agree