If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn’t be right at such a moment.
We are surrounded by worn-out, banal, useless and exhausted images, limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution.
What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs.
I like to direct landscapes just as I like to direct actors and animals.
I do whatever pushes me hardest. It’s coming at me and I try to. It’s like uninvited guest and I have to wrestle them out the door or through the window – get them out and get over with them quickly.
I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth.
You will learn more by walking from Canada to Guatemala than you will ever learn in film school.
I am so used to plunging into the unknown that any other surroundings and form of existence strike me as exotic and unsuitable for human beings.
I have always postulated that we have to find a new way to deal with reality. It’s not so much facts that interest me, but a deeper truth in them – an ecstasy of truth, an ecstatic truth that illuminates us. That’s what I’ve been after.
Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating.
The danger is to stupidly believe that depicting facts gives us much insight. If facts were the only thing that counted, the telephone directory would be the book of books.
The universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside.
I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.
I don’t care whether the person is guilty or not guilty. It’s not my business to establish guilt or innocence. It’s a court of law that does that and a jury does that, but not me.
I am not an artist and never have been. Rather I am like a craftsman and feel very close to the mediaeval artisans who produced their work anonymously and who, along with their apprentices, had a true feeling for the physical materials they were working with.
I’m not a journalist; I’m a poet.
I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.
I’m quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to film making. Maybe there’s also another alternative, that’s walking on foot.
I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.
I live my life outside of the glitz and glamour of the red carpet events, and so you’ll never see me there. I’m never at parties.