Quotes from Alain Resnais

I had a friend once who looked at his library and discovered that even if he completely stopped filmmaking (he was a filmmaker too) and just decided to read the books he had in his library, it would take him until he was 100 years old. He was a little bit panicked. But he was courageous. He went out of his house. He went to the bookstore. And he bought ten books.

They say that a director always makes the same film. I try to make, as François Truffaut said, the next film in opposition to the one that came before. I'm not sure if I succeed. To put it another way, I agree with the auteur theory, but I don't consider myself an auteur. I'm more of an artisan, a craftsman.

I never thought of becoming a director. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me - I still watch silent films.

The present and the past coexist, but the past shouldn't be in flashback.

So I used formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally.

Luck, I never looked to make difficult movies on purpose. You make the films you can make.

I'd even say it's a realistic film because that's the way it happens in our heads; that was the idea.

For me an unfavorable initial reaction happens fairly often. For some reason the more time that elapses after the film opens, the more favorable the reviews become.

It was repugnant, but it was the only way to communicate.

Oh, yes, that never happened to me in my life before. It was a risky film, and I warned the producer.

I saw part of The Singing Detective on TV in New York. I said, Something is going on here.

There was a darkness, a melancholy, that people had trouble accepting. Maybe now, it would work better.

That's easy to answer: I never had any special appetite for filmmaking, but you have to make a living and it is miraculous to earn a living working in film.

There cannot be any communication except through form. If there is no form, you cannot create emotion in the spectator.

I am never driven. Every film I've made has been an assignment.

Since we had little money and few documents, we had nothing.