Jacques Rivette

“What's important for me in a film is that it be alive, that it be imbued with presence, which is basically the same thing. And that this presence, inscribed within the film, possesses a form of magic. There's something profoundly mysterious in this.”

Max Ophüls

“Paris, which had always amused me on holiday, was too lovely… Emigration was no hardship, it was an outing. It offered the shining wet boulevards under the street lights, breakfast in Monmartre with cognac in your glass, coffee and lukewarm brioche, gigolos and prostitutes at night… Everyone in the world has two fatherlands: his own and Paris.”

Milčo Mančevski

Guy Maddin

“Whatever I do next, it'll be a horror film.”

Stanley Kubrick

“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”

Yasujirô Ozu

“I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others… For me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength.”

Lars von Trier

“I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.”

Seijun Suzuki

“I was never rebellious, I was just mischievous!”

Henri-Georges Clouzot

“I want only to tell a story. I think movies are entertainment. If at the same time you can get across something you feel, that is perfect.”

Jean-Luc Godard

“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order. ”

David Cronenberg

“Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing their whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini

“The mark which has dominated all my work is this longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which doesn't lessen but augments this love of life.”

Jean Cocteau

“Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. ”

François Truffaut

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

Akira Kurosawa

“Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied...that's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.”

John Waters

“Some call me director, producer, filmmaker. I prefer to call myself pube-king.”

Alfred Hitchcock

“For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.”

Wong Kar-wai

“Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things that we get, but not the things we wish we had.”

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

“It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful...it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.”

Jean Renoir

“A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.”