Claire Denis Quotes

What I don't like so much is to give explanations about people's behaviour ... I'm not interested in making conclusions. I would never think about myself or anyone else, 'Well, this happened, this happened, this happened, so this must be the result.' It doesn't work like that with me.

I don't want to be mysterious.

I have no relationship to the French bourgeoisie. I don't like connecting with them.

I hate the victimization of women, always.

I am always asked, 'You grew up in Africa?' Every time I introduce a film, or I'm interviewed, 'You grew up in Africa?'

I'm not a very brave person.

Filmmaking creates a sort of - trust, maybe. It has led me to a group of people I feel good with. We have something in common because of film, when otherwise we might have nothing.

Start with scout locations first.

I'm a very sinister person.

Sometimes I feel like John Wayne.

Often, women as little girls are sent off on a track for them to live a perfect life and be a perfect woman. Not for boys, who can be themselves with their mood and their temper.

I'm tiny. I'm small.

I'm an anxious person. What I like best is to smoke cigarettes and listen to music. A perfect day for me is a day with coffee, cigarettes, and music, to quote Jim Jarmusch.

You can spend your whole life in France without ever thinking about the Legion.

I'm not a tacky person, I think.

I always thought of Djibouti as a place where human history hasn't really begun yet - or perhaps it's already over. There's something in the landscape that's stronger than human civilisation. There's no agriculture, for example, and there are live volcanoes.

Marguerite Duras was a very good friend of mine and an intellectual hero. She was also a sort of mother figure. Of course she was an influence.

My mother's father was from Brazil - a painter, and not a famous one - and was always broke. But he was a free spirit, a great grandfather.

'Chocolat' was a sort of statement of my own childhood, recognizing I experienced something from the end of the colonial era and the beginning of independence as I was a child that really made me aware of things I never forgot - a sort of childhood that made me different when I was a student in France.

I was never very interested in my own experience, I think, in fact, if my films have a common link, maybe it's being a foreigner - it's common for people who are born abroad - they don't know so well where they belong.

You don't grow up naive in Africa.

A career for me is something like building a bridge. You know, where to put the lifts. You have a plan. I have a blueprint for each film, but not for my life.

I suppose I am interested in the variety of human life - how people live. I am most interested in individuals and how they respond to challenges or to difficulties or just to each other. I am curious about people.

The only thing I find interesting is self-interest.

I think you cannot make films without choosing everything.

I am the eldest child; it's lonely at the top.

Freedom is not having a big budget.

Shoes have a meaning.

I hate the idea of growing accustomed to someone and being faithful.

I can't imagine a society with absolutely no solidarity. For me, it's a nightmare. And I don't want to live in a place like that.

A father who sees his daughter leave in the arms of another man does not feel the same as a mother. It is heartrending for her, too. But it is not the same.

I have very strong relationships with my actors when I'm shooting. When you love an actor's work, you always feel you have to go further, and you make several films together. One film just gives you time to get acquainted.

A film takes a lot of time, and yet not enough to share with the people you're making the movie with, I think.

The camera is not your eye, and it's not the eye of the audience. I don't think it's my eye, either. It belongs to the film.

Inside the family, you can go from hate to passivity to extreme love within the same hour.

I've never seen a world where only men were responsible for the violence, and the women were innocent. They go together. Men and women are a violent mixture.

I think working as an assistant was a part of knowing people who like cinema, and to learn from a movie, you have to watch it.

I reproach so many things about my family, but on the other hand, I kept asking them to be my family.

The cinema should be human and be part of people's lives; it should focus on ordinary existences in sometimes extraordinary situations and places. That is what really motivates me.

Life is not better and more moral than it was in the '50s. It's just the same.

My grandfather died when I was 12, but I remember the sorrow of my mother. Even now, she's an old lady, but when she speaks about her father, she looks young. A love like that is undefeated, you know?

When I was doing 'Beau Travail,' I listened a lot to Benjamin Britten.

When making a film, if I feel nothing in my body, I can't work. I have to touch. I have to feel. I never stop touching.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music.

When you have countries that have a lot of minerals and diamonds and oil and are in business with companies from all over the world - but these companies don't share, really, their profits - this is called post-post-colonial.

In a way, I feel obliged to respect Jean Rouch because I am told he is very important.

I can be unkind to someone in the street or in the subway - I'm a bad-tempered person - but I'm unable to be unkind to a character. They exist because of me, and I have responsibility for them.

I long to make films. I'm dying to be inside the next film. I always hope there will be another film.

Sometimes bleak is good. Sometimes bleak is necessary. Some part of life is always bleak.

Making pizza is a great job. All that kneading the dough - everything to do with cooking is wonderful, sensual.