Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

Experience is what you get while looking for something else.

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

Cinema is an old whore, like circus and variety, who knows how to give many kinds of pleasure. Besides, you can't teach old fleas new dogs.

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.

It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive.

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.

Censorship is advertising paid by the government.

God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?

Fate is written in the face.

A different language is a different vision of life.

Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be.

A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.

All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

You exist only in what you do.

Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real.

I always direct the same film. I cannot distinguish one from the other.

I am not the kind of director who sits in a chair smoking a cigar talking with a microphone to 10 assistants. I need to move. To touch. To put a painting on a wall. To arrange a set.

If you do what you were born to do, I think you will never grow old.

If you see with innocent eyes, everything is divine.

In 'Roma,' I wanted to get across the idea that underneath Rome today is ancient Rome. So close. I am always conscious of that, and it thrills me. Imagine being in a traffic jam at the Coliseum! Rome is the most wonderful movie set in the world... As was the case with many of my film ideas, it was inspired by a dream.

When I start a picture, I always have a script, but I change it every day. I put in what occurs to me that day out of my imagination. You start on a voyage; you know where you will end up but not what will occur along the way. You want to be surprised.

No matter what happens always keep your childhood innocence. Its the most important thing.

There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self we gain immeasurably.

If you see with innocent eyes everything is divine.

There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self, we gain immeasurably.

The visionary is the only realist.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.