When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.

Taste is a result of a thousand distastes.

An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox.

The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.

I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job.

When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.

In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs.

I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.

Is the cinema more important than life?

Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings.

Film lovers are sick people.

The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has.

The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary.

At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd be a critic or a filmmaker, but I knew it would be something like that.

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema.

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

I have always preferred the reflect of the life to life itself.

I prefer to be busy all day long, and when you work for someone else, you're not busy enough.

I'd skip school regularly to see movies - even in the morning, in the small Parisian theaters that opened early.

Some day I'll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste.

What switched me to films was the flood of American pictures into Paris after the Liberation.

A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking it always tends to break up as you go along and drag you under with it.

Airing ones dirty linen never makes for a masterpiece.

It's funny, 'cause it seems like just yesterday that I was the youngest player just starting out. But now there are young players all over the league, and they'll ask me questions about playing overseas or finding an agent.

When Frank the Pug is singing I Will Survive, the only reason it's funny is that Will is in that shot trying not to get angry. A shot of a dog singing I Will Survive on its own will not get a laugh.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

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.

You amaze me. You're 229 years old and that's what you think is funny.

You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.

There's a constant flow of child actors. It's kind of funny to watch the new crew come through. I think, You poor little things. You're going to have to struggle for a long time.

For sheer sexiness, a man must be beautiful. Funny. yes. Clever, no.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

I had an idea of what I thought was funny. It's kind of based on how I am.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.

So to me, Texas Hold 'em puts me to sleep. At least when you play stud, you can be funny as you deal. Somebody some day is going to come up with a Stud show that's going to work.

Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.

Baldwin is sort of getting to be a bit funny. I don't know what happened, but a few years ago they suddenly went bankrupt and Gibson bought the whole outfit. Since then they haven't seemed to be doing an awfully good job of providing pianos.

It's funny how sometimes how the public some people think I was born like this. That I maybe I sleep and I do big muscle, but its a lot of work to look like this and to be in this kind of condition.

I think back to some of the things Harry said and some of the things I said trying to be funny. If I said them now, it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

Shirley MacLaine said, You're so funny, then gave me a hug. Everything went white. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see. I thought I was going to pass out.

I think movies glamorize violence, in the sense that they make it in a way that it's either cool or funny.

I remember interviewing someone I actually felt bad for, and therefore didn't want to take an ironic stance against him. It actually turned out to be a really funny piece.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

I don't think know if anything's going to translate anywhere. You're making a movie, you hope it's going to be funny, you can't think about how it's going to go over.