Jean-Luc Godard

I write and film history; I don't make it. One can be a good critic and a moral observer, but one remains professionally detached as a writer and a filmmaker.

More or less, I am always saying, 'Let's do what has not been done.'

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion.

To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body - both go together, they can't be separated.

I make film to make time pass.

People come to Cannes just to advertise their films, not with a particular message. But the advantage is that if you go to the festival, you get so much press coverage in three days that it advertises the film for the rest of the year.

I don't have a visa for the U.S., and I don't want to apply for one. And I don't want to fly for that long.

I am trying to change the world.

Clumsiness attempts to fix simplicity straight in the eye. It is not a mark of incompetence but of reticence.

The history of cinema appears to be easy to do, since it is, after all, made up of images; cinema appears to be the only medium where all one has to do is re-project these images so that one can see what has happened.

A film ingeniously directed does indeed give the impression of having been laid end to end, but a film ingeniously edited gives the impression of having suppressed all direction.

The idea is to make the script out of a political analysis and then to convey that - sometimes in poetry, sometimes science, sometimes all it takes is a film. The film itself is less and less spectacular because I think very strongly now the more spectacular you are, the more you are absorbed by the things you are trying to destroy.

One has to change one's life. Maybe this is easier for people who have nothing to do than for those who have something to do.

More or less, I am always saying, 'Give me more. Let's do what has not been done.'

We once believed we were auteurs, but we weren't. We had no idea, really. Film is over. It's sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur.

I prefer to work when there are people against whom I have to struggle.

Three-quarters of directors waste four hours on a shot that requires five minutes of actual directing. I prefer to have five minutes' work for the crew - and keep the three hours to myself for thought.

When the Holocaust happened, I was 15 years old. My parents kept it a secret from me, despite belonging to the Red Cross. I only found out about it much later. Even today I still feel guilty, because I was an ignoramus between the age of 15 and 25. I am sorry I couldn't stand up for them.

I want to be together with everyone else but stay lonely.

Why did they go to Hollywood? Because they could get access to the American financial sector. The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors nor lawyers or professors. That's why they concentrated on something new: cinema.

Cinema is not a series of abstract ideas, but rather the phrasing of moments.

Spielberg, like many others, wants to convince before he discusses. In that, there is something very totalitarian.

I know nothing of life except through the cinema.

Every edit is a lie.