There’s more substance in my prose and my poetry than in all my films together. Writing is a more direct way of expressing yourself because, in cinema, you always have finances, organization, actors, technical apparatus and all that stuff coming in between.
You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.
Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.
Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
I see planets that don’t exist and landscapes that have only been dreamed.
In my films, I hope there are a few moments where you feel almost illuminated, like in a state of ecstasy, stepping out of yourself, beyond yourself and perceiving something which is only, in the case of cinema, possible in collective dreams.
If you don’t have a deal in two days, you won’t have a deal in two years.
In a way, I managed to get the deepest things, the best things out of people. That’s why I’m a filmmaker. If you don’t have it in you, you’d better do something else.
I shouldn’t make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.
I function better in the jungle in Amazonia or Antarctica or Alaska or the Sahara desert. An artificial environment like a studio has never attracted me. I could work in a studio, but I would never really feel at home.
The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor.
You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn’t mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that’s what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.
Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.
I never planned my career in steps. It’s all coming at me like burglars in the night.
If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.
I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard.
I’m not into the culture of complaint. I roll up my sleeves and somehow I get it together.
Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.
There are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there’s insecurity, collapse of financial systems – that’s where film noir always hits fertile ground.
People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other’s murder.