“Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.”

“My relationship with my body has changed. I used to consider it as a servant who should obey, function, give pleasure. In sickness, you realise that you are not the boss. It is the other way around.”

“Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.”

“Censorship is advertising paid by the government.”

“All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography.”

“When I start a picture, I always have a script, but I change it every day. I put in what occurs to me that day out of my imagination. You start on a voyage; you know where you will end up but not what will occur along the way. You want to be surprised.”

“Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.”

“Experience is what you get while looking for something else.”

“It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive.”

“You exist only in what you do.”

“A different language is a different vision of life.”