"Urbs Syon aurea, patria lactea, cive decora Omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis et cor et ora Nescio, nescio, quae jubilatio, lux tibi quali Quam sociala gaudia, gloria quam specialis."

"Cette femme a fait comme Troie: De braves gens sans aucun fruit Furent dix ans à cette proie Un cheval n'y fut qu'une nuit."

"J’ay vescu sans nul pensement, Me laissant aller doucement A la douce loy naturelle; Et ne scaurois dire pourquoy La Mort daigna penser à moy Qui n’ay daigné penser en elle."

"N’en desplaise aux docteurs, Cordeliers, Jacobins, Pardieu! les plus grands clercs ne sont pas les plus fins."

"Aidez-vous seulement et Dieu vous aidera."

"Chacun est artisan de sa bonne fortune."

"Les fous sont aux échecs les plus proches des rois."

"Muhammad isn't sacred to me. I don't blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don't live under Quranic law."

"I am not afraid of reprisals, I have no children, no wife, no car, no debt. It might sound a bit pompous, but I'd prefer to die on my feet than to live on my knees."

"Se tout le ciel estoit de feuilles d'or, Et li airs fust estellés d'argent fin, Et tous les vens fussent pleins de tresor, Et les gouttes fussent toutes florin D'eaue de mer, et pleust soir et matin Richesses, biens, honeurs, joiaux, argent, Tant que rempli en fust toute la gent, La terre aussi en fust mouillee toute, Et fusse nu, – de tel pluie et tel vent Ja sur mon cors n'en cherroit une goutte."

"Poete hault, loenge d'escuiye, En ton jardin ne seroie qu'ortie."

"Aussi tost vient à Pasques limaçon."

"Tuit estrangier l'aiment et ameront, Car pour deduit et pour estre jolis, Jamais cité tele ne trouveront: Riens ne se puet comparer a Paris."

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

"Si l'on veut abolir la peine de mort en ce cas, que MM. les assassins commencent: qu'ils ne tuent pas, on ne les tuera pas."

"Let us try to see things from their better side: You complain about seeing thorny rose bushes; Me, I rejoice and give thanks to the gods That thorns have roses."

"Marche Funèbre composée pour les Funérailles d'un grand homme sourd."

"Partir, c'est mourir un peu... mais mourir, c'est partir beaucoup."

"Première communion de jeunes filles chlorotiques par un temps de neige."

"Parce que vous êtes un grand seigneur, vous vous croyez un grand génie! … vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître, et rien de plus. Du reste homme assez ordinaire!"

"Tout finit par des chansons."

"Calomniez, calomniez; il en reste toujours quelque chose."

"De toutes les choses sérieuses, le mariage étant la plus bouffonne."

"Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d'être obligé d'en pleurer."

"Il n'est pas nécessaire de tenir les choses pour en raisonner."

"Que les gens d'esprit sont bêtes."

"Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n'est point d'éloge flatteur; et qu'il n'y a que les petits hommes qui redoutent les petits écrits."

"Médiocre et rampant, et l'on arrive à tout."

"Boire sans soif et faire l'amour en tout temps, madame, il n'y a que ça qui nous distingue des autres bêtes."

"Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante."

"Aujourd'hui, ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante."

"He sees things from every point of view. He's an extraordinarily hard worker. I think he's worked for a long time, in every field. He's talented, passionate and has had an incredibly hard and full life that I'm sure you know about. I can not imagine myself having some of his experiences. You either swim or drown, but some like him go on and make every moment important. I think that's what he does."

"Gunson added that it was false to claim, as the present district attorney’s office does in their request for my extradition, that the time I spent in Chino was for the purpose of a diagnostic study."

"Whenever I get happy, I always have a terrible feeling."

"Oh, the little man wanted me—Roman Polanski. Very dwarfish creature with a high giggle. After a take, he wouldn't say, "Cut." One would just hear a "Tee hee hee." [...] Roman presented everything in [such] a calm, matter-of-fact way that the creeping terror just builds. It's sheer genius on his part. It's a very quiet movie where a door creaking can unnerve one. There's a lot of dark comedy in there, too. he was a very careful director—explained everything, multiple takes, very demanding, very appreciative when one got it right. Loved to talk old movies with me."

"My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way."

"We dried ourselves and each other. She said she was feeling better. Then, very gently, I began to kiss and caress her. After this had gone on for some time, I led her over to the couch."

"‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. She said her asthma was playing her up.… She was wheezing quite audibly by now. She picked up my towel and said, ‘I’d better rest awhile; otherwise I might pass out.’"

"There was no doubt about Sandra's experience and lack of inhibition. She spread herself and I entered her. She wasn't unresponsive. Yet, when I asked her softly if she was liking it, she resorted to her favorite expression: ‘It’s all right.’"

"If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children."

"Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater."

"You know, whenever you do something new and original, people run to see it because it's different. Then, if it happens to be successful, the studios rush to imitate it. It becomes commonplace right away. But it's been like that before, I think. Now, the stakes are so gigantic that they cut each other's throats. So if most of the films are failures, then those that succeed so spectacularly, so commercially, become the norm. It's like a roulette for the studios. The problem with it is that it becomes more and more of a committee. Before, you dealt with the studio. It had one or two persons and now you have masses of executives who have to justify their existence and write so-called "creative notes" and have creative meetings. They obsess about the word creative probably because they aren't."

"Berlin was great. It’s a new generation. If you continue to hate, you are entering into the same philosophy that began the war. You have to look forward at people and new times."

"33 years ago I pleaded guilty, and I served time at the prison for common law crimes at Chino, not in a VIP prison. That period was to have covered the totality of my sentence. By the time I left prison, the judge had changed his mind and claimed that the time served at Chino did not fulfil the entire sentence, and it is this reversal that justified my leaving the United States."

"On February 26 last, Roger Gunson, the deputy district attorney in charge of the case in 1977, now retired, testified under oath before Judge Mary Lou Villar in the presence of David Walgren, the present deputy district attorney in charge of the case, who was at liberty to contradict and question him, that on September 16, 1977, Judge Rittenband stated to all the parties concerned that my term of imprisonment in Chino constituted the totality of the sentence I would have to serve."

"It's already getting more and more difficult to make an ambitious and original film. There are less and less independent producers or independent companies and an increasing number of corporations who are more interested in balance sheets than in artistic achievement. They want to make a killing each time they produce a film. They're only interested in the lowest common denominator because they're trying to reach the widest audience. And you got some kind of entropy. That's the danger; they look more alike, those films. The style is all melting and it all looks the same. Even young directors — for most of them, their only standard of achievement is how well their films do on the first weekend or whatever. It worries me. But then, from time to time, you have a film like The Usual Suspects or.... I'm trying to think of something American with some kind of originality... Pulp Fiction."

"The probation officers quoted a pair of psychiatrists as saying that Mr. Polanski was not “a pedophile” or a “sexual deviate.”"

"I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I'm playing."

"I never made a film which fully satisfied me."