I find the subject of childhood fascinating. I explored this subject in Speak to me of love and I am curious about portraying the often painful transition into the adult world.

You know French means like sophisticated, well educated, so far.

Genre aside, I'd like to make a film about people.

Even if I think in English, it's more a language of acting than French.

I think it's almost easier to make people cry than to make people laugh.

You can perform all kind of characters but you cannot change what people feel for you.

It is something actresses need to go through and I think they look forward to being naked in a movie. I don't know why, but it is something you need to exhaust from yourself.

Oh, I'm not English, I cannot talk on behalf of an English person. I'm French. I can say about French. They are quite emotional, though, and they talk about their emotions.

But the privileges that one has enjoyed and exploited can sometimes turn against you: nobody thinks of you as a director, you are always an actress.

There is no doubt that this film is autobiographical, but at the same time it also tries to portray an ordinary couple in a language that everyone can understand.

Well it is sometimes difficult to act in another language.

I just heard a very funny story about somebody who died yesterday, I'm sorry to say so but it was so absurd that you can't help laughing. And the person that was concerned about that story was laughing too.

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes.

So, sometimes, when I'm not happy with my performance and I have to think, I will think in English.

As you know it is a comedy so everything is a little bit pushed. That's what's funny about this kind of movie is you can laugh about the absurdity, and the bad side of life.

I'm a good storyteller.

And I think it's very rare to have good stories, well written comedies.

Mel Gibson would not be a good James Bond.

What I am interested in is the present time.

When you direct your first film, you always start by telling stories that you are familiar with.

I find the subject of childhood fascinating. I explored this subject in Speak to me of love and I am curious about portraying the often painful transition into the adult world.

Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.

Acting is wonderful therapy for people. Instead of suffering for yourself, someone will do it for you.

All I will say is that I'm playing a lot of different roles that, to be honest, are more interesting and demanding than any I've played before.

I felt sometimes too responsible as an actor because people promote violence or weird things that I don't want to be part of.

I need the seasons to live to the rhythm of rain and sun.

I think I'm a tough person, but for sure, I would talk under torture.

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

I don't carry any early childhood trauma around with me, if that's what you're hinting at. The story of the bicycles - and there were three of them which were stolen from me - I've dealt with it well.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

Well I was an asthmatic child. So that for most of my childhood I was in bed. Bedridden.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

I had a kind of Dickensian childhood.

Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice.

I didn't have a happy childhood.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

My whole family actually, but my parents. I had such a normal and amazing childhood. I've been so lucky. My parents are cool and normal. They don't talk about the business and I still have stuff to do at their house.

From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else.

I gave up my childhood for a career.