screenwriters-from-france

"Without a doubt, by his personality, at once warm, deep, laughing and obstinate, as well as by the exceptional events which made up his life, he largely influenced the development of Buddhism as a whole in the 20th century, making it clearer, more accessible, closer to humanity. Not knowing if his political fight will achieve the goal he seeks, he lives in the movement, and in the consciousness of this movement. He accepts the idea that he may be the last Dalai Lama. If, one day, the Tibetan people no longer want this institution, he will retire, he says, to a convent, without any possessions, to end his days there like an old monk bent over his staff. And in the end, he adds with a laugh, maybe it’s not bad."

"In our enigmatic and often difficult relationships with the world, Buddhism offers a vocabulary, a certain number of conceptual and operational tools which allow us to dialogue. And this in very current areas such as overpopulation, ecology, conflict resolution, the role of modern science and its understanding. In more speculative areas, it also provides us with approaches, relations, always very practical, concerning questions about death, fear, suffering. Our traditions don't always have the answers, or perhaps they have become muddled..."

"We call models "muses", and that's mostly what's left in the history of art for women artists...Dora Maar was the muse of Picasso but also a photographer at the centre of the surrealist scene. And |Gabrièle Picabia was the wife of [avant-garde painter [[w:Francis Picabia||Francis] Picabia]] but also the brain of his work. It's about co-creation, not this fetishised, silent woman standing there beautiful and mute"

"A few weeks ago I went to a screening of 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' at Utopia. I'm not a very introspective person but when I get on that stage, it feels even more overwhelming than showing my films at the Cannes film festival. Because standing there, I'm so close to my past. I can see how far I've come."

"The last scene came really, really early, disconnected from even the idea of a woman painter…I wanted to write a love story and I thought, ‘What do I want to tell?’ And that scene came up really, really quickly, alone, by itself. The weird compass of the film was its last scene. That’s a compass, but it’s a high pressure one."

"We want people to have their heart broken and think about themselves, but enjoy this experience of this strong love story...But it’s also about the memory of a love story. It’s a lot about the present, the rise of desire, but it’s also about what’s left of a love story. What’s the memory of a love story. There’s these two timelines that sometimes are contiguous, contaminating one another. We are trying to propose another politic of love where it’s not about possession or donation or eternal love or death or eternity or whatever. It’s more about love as a dynamic that can only grow."

"I'm not saying that you have to love it all. [...] But, yes, you should love it all."

"It's a very bourgeois industry. There's resistance to radicalism, and also less youth in charge. "A film can be feminist?" They don't know this concept. They don't read the book. They don't even know about the fact that "male gaze" exists. You can tell it's a country where there’s a lot of sexism, and a strong culture of patriarchy."

""The most important thing is always the story. Then come the actors." - Interview for The Cinema (2018)"

""I would rather stop too soon than too late." - Interview for The Guardian (2011)"

""The most difficult part of filmmaking, is the need for directors to find a balance between being sensitive and being the leader." - Interview for The Hollywoodreporter (2017)"

"“I like to start on time because I love to let the people go on time because they have families. They have kids and I don’t want to abuse them for 2 hours. - Interview for The Cinemovie (2017)"

"You humans act so strange. Everything you create is used to destroy."

"You no trouble. Me... Fifth element... supreme being... me protect you."

"This film is extremely visual. It is difficult to describe in words without running the risk of losing or boring the reader. I have come up with a simplified summary, therefore, like a readers guide, which will conjure up the images in as few words as possible :"

"Life was given to us a billion years ago. What have we done with it?"

"Loving a film is like falling in love with a woman or with a man like you never expect it. It's not the one you think you will be in love with, you know. You think always that he will be with a beard, and black, and big and finally he's Chinese and you know it's the same thing. There's something very organic about the film and if you forgot it, if you don't have this seed in it...this organic flavor in it the film doesn't work it's wrong. - Interview for The Collider (2016)"

"You know, money will never save anyone. Compassion can save someone, love can save someone, money will never save anyone. And as long as the entire society will put money first... Money should be like third or fourth or fifth, I'm not saying lets get rid of money, but how can we put money as number one? As the only value, like if you are rich, you're famous you go VIP, why? It's just insane, the way we've transformed the society. - Interview for The Huffpost (2017)"

"Sometimes I see people finish a film and they go, "Yeah, that was good. Where are we going to eat?" - Interview for The Slashfilm (2016)"

"When you're watching sci-fi today, driven ninety percent by Marvel and DC Comics, there's feeling, there's a pattern, there's a thing, and then we get used to it. - Interview for The Slashfilm 92017)"

"Learning's always a painful process."

""I love the fantasy and it’s so enjoyable and so funny and fresh. You can reinvent everything and yeah, it’s very enjoyable." - Interview for The Denofgeek (2018)"

"If you find the actress or the actor who is perfect for the role, that’s unbeatable. If you choose someone because he’s known or because you think he’s going to make money or things, three years later, you never know. - Interview for The Thriftyjinxy (2017)"

"I AM EVERYWHERE"

"“If you’re a race runner, and you run, and progress, and you have the feeling that, yeah, you’re pretty good. You watch your time, and every week you make it better, and there’s a certain moment that you feel that maybe you can go to the Olympic games because you feel good. And then you watch TV and you see Usain Bolt. And then you say, ‘I’m not going to go this year, I’m going in four years’. - Interview for The Alarabiya (2017)"

"I think there are three qualities that people believe are weaknesses, but which I believe are strengths, particularly for a filmmaker: paranoia, megalomania and mental contagion."

"Curiosity is the beginning of all wisdom."

"We always want someone we've treated badly to be gay. It's less upsetting."

"Women believed in death. Without exception. It was part of their makeup. Whereas men refused to face up to it. Not only death, in fact, but life, too: a man, learning that his wife or girlfriend is pregnant, reacts like some beast of the field - "I can't believe it's true!" - while women look at the same situation as either happy news or a momentary inconvenience."

"It is healthier to see the good points of others than to analyze our own bad ones."

"In love, as in finance, only the rich can get credit."

"Jazz music is a form of accelerated unconcern."

"It's not doubt that drives people crazy, it's certainty that does."

"No one ever has time to examine himself honestly, and most people look no further than their neighbors' eyes, in which they may see their own reflection."

"Paul had always thought that women were never more serious than when they were naked."

"Lying stimulates one's imagination and ingenuity."

"The fact that a woman you love reaches a point in the relationship where she ceases to love you, and despite that you can never bring yourself to scorn or despise her, is very rare indeed."

"Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before."

"No one is more conventional than a woman who is falling out of love."

""One must cherish one's effigies, if one can tolerate them, perhaps more lovingly than one cherishes one's intrinsic self." That's the ABC of pride. And of humor."

"I never make moral judgments. All I would say is that a person was droll, or gay, or, above all, a bore. Making judgments for or against my characters bores me enormously; it doesn’t interest me at all. The only morality for a novelist is the morality of his esthétique."

"Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal."

"Very broadly, I think one writes and rewrites the same book. I lead a character from book to book, I continue along with the same ideas. Only the angle of vision, the method, the lighting, change."

"The ways of love are all the same, whether infantile, childish, sexual, tender, sadistic, erotic, or whispered. It's simply a question of understanding, of understanding oneself above all: in bed, in broad daylight, madly or not at all, in shadow, in sunlight, in despair or at table. Otherwise, it's no use. Any of it. And the little time we have left for living, while we're still alive, in other words capable of giving pleasure, and the little time we have left for thinking (or pretending to) in this vast, mindless cacophony that daily life has become, ineluctable, uncontrollable, and truly unacceptable to any civilized person, we must make absolutely certain that we share."

"Only by pursuing the extremes in one's nature, with all its contradictions, appetites, aversions, rages, can one hope to understand a little — oh, I admit only a very little — of what life is about."

"No one, but no one, ever behaves "well" in bed unless they love or are loved — two conditions seldom fulfilled."

"For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary."

"Could you love a woman you didn't respect? Could you worship someone without believeing in her? Could you be madly in love with a woman you didn't admire? Well, you could. Not only that, it might be better that way. Easier. It took Paul almost forty years to learn that carnal platitude. Nevertheless, he always took Sonia to dinners where, sooner or later, her stupidity would explode, with the result that brighter souls would inevitably pick up on it right away and cast a sympathetic, albeit ironical, look in his direction, which only excited him all the more."

"Desire, even the basest, kind, required the notion of futurity if it was ever to come off. A man without a future, a dying man, was no longer desirable. And however stupid such a reaction might have seemed, Paul knew that if the situation was ever reversed, he would feel the same way about the woman. Desire would have turned into compassion. Which is tantamount to saying that desire would vanish into thin air."

"Love is worth whatever it costs."