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

I have no problem being with people of different nationalities.

Someone knocks at the door of an apartment to borrow salt or sugar, people run into each other in the elevator, and in this way become inscribed in the spectator's memory.

We're always looking at this love through the eyes of the person who is suffering because of this love.

To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work.

The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.

Of course I'd like to get beyond the concrete. But it's really difficult. Very difficult.

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

In real life, there are names that surprise us because they don't seem to suit the person at all.

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

There are mysteries, secret zones in each individual.

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

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

Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It's an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.

Documentaries deal with people who live real, everyday lives. But if these people trusted us and told us the truth about their lives, it could be used against them - which sometimes happened.

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.

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

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.

I was happy when I got into film school. I'd simply satisfied my ambition to show them that I could get in - nothing else - although I do believe they shouldn't have accepted me. I was a complete idiot. I can't understand why they took me. Probably because I'd tried three times.

If I have a goal, then it is to escape from this literalism. I'll never achieve it; in the same way that I'll never manage to describe what really dwells within my character, although I keep on trying.

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

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.

Among absent lovers, ardor always fares better.

French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow.

I have considered rap music stars, and there is one in my new book, Lovers and Players, and there is also a hip-hop music mogul who I think you will like a lot.

The quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love.

I had previously been in the band the Modern Lovers with Jonathan Richman.

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.

In every question and every remark tossed back and forth between lovers who have not played out the last fugue, there is one question and it is this: 'Is there someone new?'

Eventually you love people - friends or lovers - because of their flaws.

The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.

Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.

Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

The reason that lovers never weary each other is because they are always talking about themselves.

When friends and lovers die and your world gets quieter; that's when the silence comes closer; that's when next isn't the least bit theoretical or abstract.

The love story for me was the nature of the love and not the age of the lovers.

We Greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.

Lovers have a right to betray you... friends don't.

Women who have had no lovers, or having had one, two or three, have not found a husband, have perhaps rather had a miss than a loss, as men go.

Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.

Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death.

It's impossible to compare two bands. It would be like comparing two lovers.

All great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction.

I'm more interested in interpersonal relationships - between lovers families, siblings. That's why I write about how we treat each other.

What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Lovers of painting and lovers of music are people who openly display their preference like a delectable ailment that isolates them and makes them proud.