People From Paris

"Painting the sensual with thy hues divine,— Thou turn'st away thy face, while scattering Perchance upon his brow some fading flowers, Of which he strives to twine a funeral crown, Spending his life to weave a wreath of death!"

"Alas! thou sufferest, too, although thy pangs Bring naught to birth, nothing create, nor serve!"

"Not that I rise against thee, Poetry, Mother of Beauty, of ideal Life! But I must pity him condemned to dwell Within the limits of these whirling worlds In dying agonies, or yet to be, Doomed to sad memories, or prophecies, Perchance remorse, or vague resentiments,— Who gives himself to thee! for everywhere Thou ruinest wholly those who consecrate Themselves, with all they are, to thee alone, Who solely live the voices of thy glory!"

"A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point."

"The newspapers were saying, 'You have AIDS.' They actually said I was dead. I just threw myself into my work when the whispering campaign turned really ugly. I think Camille saved me. I felt incredibly paranoid, just as Camille did. And do you know? I was able to use that in doing Camille's scenes. It made them better."

"I am a follower of hyaluronic acid – always in small doses of course – to fill wrinkles and fine lines."

"I like films that rest in the memory so I try and choose parts which have some kind of social or emotional force. For me, being an actress is not just a profession but a profession of faith."

"All strategical decisions in France are made by a non-French unelected oligarchy. The French political stage is a puppet theater, which explains the growing lack of interest for politics, among the French people."

"(The European Union is) a global apartheid (ruled) by the world of Whites."

"Just as we say “listening and hearing,” “looking and seeing,” so we ought to have two expressions to distinguish active reading from passive."

"What a teacher imparts by word of mouth is nothing in comparison with what he teaches us to get for ourselves from books."

"Use your radio, but know how to distrust it—and do not let a day go by without reading and meditation if you want to save your soul, that soul which is yours and yours alone."

"The instinct to synthesize is a good one so long as it is concerned with elements that are capable of forming a whole. But today the man in the street is fed, morally as well as physically, on a mass of debris which has no resemblance to a nourishing diet. There is no method in this madness, which is the very negation of culture."

"For many people in the future, radio will take the place of an inner life."

"Aristocracy of the mind … is the only true aristocracy in my opinion. It is the essence, the very life of a well-built society."

"One of my friends whom I hold in high esteem admitted to me the other day that when he wants to work nowadays … he has to turn on his radio. The droning of the loudspeaker—so he says—puts him in a favorable frame of mind and ideas pour out. I cannot help but thinking that this is not the act of a true musician. For thought has a rhythm of its own, which must either clash with the rhythm from outside and lose energy, or else submit to the outer impulse in restless slavery."

"Culture is at once the expression and the reward of an effort, and any system of civilization which tends to relax effort will suffer a corresponding depreciation of culture."

"… the cinema and the radio and the effect they have had in weakening the impulse to spiritual effort"

"Is it possible to create a maintain a true culture, a strong and flourishing culture, through the medium of pictoral and oral apparatus?"

"When I say, “Beware of the radio if you want to improve your mind,” … I am warning the public against their worst enemy, conformity."

"A book exhales a subtle odor of spirituality throughout the place it adorns."

"Books are the friends of solitude. They develop individuality and freedom. In solitary reading a man who is seeking himself has some chance of finding himself."

"It is an extraordinary thing that this civilization, which wears out our nerves and exacts an almost painful effort from us in all our doings, should be at great pains to spare the mass of people that intellectual effort which is the only measure of true culture."

"Radio and cinema are daily playing a more and more important part, not only in the amusements of the twentieth-century man but also in the visible formation of his character."

"I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images."

"… a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries, … a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence,… which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star’ in Los Angeles."

"The book is one of the springs of creative individualism, that individualism which, in these uncertain times, remains the guardian angel of human society. For five hundred years the book has been, for the solitary mind, an incomparable instrument of uplift and liberation."

"If the public gets out of the habit of reading they will not come back to it. We shall enter a new phase of our history from which there is no turning back."

"M. André Mayer … made an astonishing confidence not long ago. “The laboratories,” he said, “are working at this moment with splendid results. In physics and biology, for example, we can predict new and very important discoveries. What is humanity going to do with the power which will soon be put into its hands? Humanity is not yet ready to receive this power. It is not in a state to make good use of it.” The events of the moment prove that this power, of which we know very little yet, and which is announced to us with such proper reserve, has little chance of serving the cause of man straight away. It will more probably be employed, or rather confiscated, for the benefit of the ambitious, the impudent, and the reckless."

"If humanity were to lose its libraries, not only would it be deprived of certain treasures of art, certain spiritual riches, but, more important still, it would lose its recipes for living."

"In books may be found the recipes for manufacture of a steam-engine alongside the recipes for daily living—the prescriptions for the mind and the heart."

"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)"

""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)"

"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)"

"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)"

"Learning's always a painful process."

"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 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)"

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

"“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)"

"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 :"

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

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

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

"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)"

"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)"

"From now on whatever the hour represented on the canvas, a supreme accord will be wrought amongst all the parts of the subject: the water, the sky, the clouds, the foliage, reunified by the atmosphere, will form a whole of an irreproachable homogeneity, a grandiose and charming image of natural harmony."

"The real us present, and it is transfigured... It is everywhere a reality at once immutable and changing. Matter is present, submitted to a luminous phantasmagoria. What Monet paints is the space that exists between himself and things."