Albert Brooks

“When I die, if the word ‘thong’ appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I’ve screwed up.”

Peter Tscherkassky

“I refer to my work as being cinematographic poetry and that’s why I love that layering, those superimpositions, right from the beginning of my filmic work.”

Youssef Chahine

“I am young. I am only 81 years old. I hope I can keep working for another 10 years. Old age is to let oneself become old.”

Chris Marker

“Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.”

Terrence Malick

“[On Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this would, among other things, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence, but still keep its dreamy quality.”

Arturo Ripstein

“North american cinema is the only true weapon of mass destruction. It has achieved to convince the audience not only that it's the best possible cinema, but that it is the only.”

Yoshishige Yoshida

“I don’t think it’s possible to have an abstract idea of a man and an abstract idea of a woman and put those two characters in a story.”

Christoffer Boe

“I liked movies so much that they became an obsession. I am still trying to kick the habit.”

Alfonso Cuarón

“The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or bad movie, it's just to see what you learn for the next one.”

Veiko Õunpuu

“Making a film is a lot of headaches; takes a lot and a lot of time and you yourself might change your views on the world and the state of things many times during the whole process... but you can create a world that has an opportunity to stand (at least for couple of hours) as equal to that world we inhabit. I believe that to be of some value.”

Jacques Tati

“Like a dancer learns to dance ... a visual comic learns to use his legs.”

George Stevens

“To produce and direct a movie today, a man really ought to have two heads. It is like trying to be a traffic cop and write a poem at the same time.”

Nicholas Ray

“You like these films, but you can't imagine how often they represent only fifty percent of what I wanted to do. You have no idea how I had to fight to achieve even that fifty percent.”

Maurice Pialat

“What I try to do, with the actors' consent, is to create something by beginning with a set situation that we can deviate from in the course of the shoot. ”

Derek Cianfrance

[On making 'Blue Valentine'] “There was one day where we were shooting on the bus. That's a bit of a movie trope - the encounter on a bus - and yet when we shot that scene, we had a rainbow come out of nowhere. When stuff like that happens, and I know it sounds kind of corny, but you really feel that you are doing the right thing at the right time.”

Claire Denis

“Even if it's the dream of a voyage, I think it was very important for me that the film offer the two sides of the globe.”

Juraj Jakubisko

“The visual aspect of my films is very important and in three feature films I did the photography myself, and I'm not even talking about the documentary films that I made. I must admit I never wanted to be a director.”

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Marcel Carné

“I don't know what they'll say when I die. I don't give a damn, but they'll probably cry.”

Mikio Naruse

“From the youngest age, I have thought that the world we live in betrays us; this thought still remains with me.”