Eric Cantona Quotes

I don't take life so seriously ... I can just play with life.

For me, I don't like it when there is too much interference in our lives. We're not children. It is our own life in our hands.

I don't want to go to Hollywood.

You can change your wife, your politics, your religion, but never, never can you change your favourite football team.

I would like to compare football and cinema. I think it's very similar. It's two games ... different games. You have to work very hard and find the confidence to enjoy it on the pitch or in the film.

What is the system? It revolves around the banks, the system is built on the power of the banks, so it can be destroyed through the banks.

When you arrive in England for football it's a paradise.

Even as a footballer, I was always being creative.

Desire is important.

I like to be fascinated by the people I photograph. Sometimes I don't admire them but I'm interested in them.

We all seem to be about aggression and greed. It's a massive pressure that affects us all.

Become a legend? But I am already.

Those who hate or disrespect Sir Alex Ferguson , its only because he snatched away their dreams of winning.

I live to feel myself in danger.

After his first training session in heaven, George Best, from the favourite right wing, turned the head of God who was filling in at left back. I would love him to save me a place in his team, George Best that is, not God.

I don't play against a particular team. I play against the idea of losing

It is unacceptable that people often have to make huge sacrifices just to find a place to live, a roof over their heads.

I prefer to play and lose rather than win, because I know in advance I'm going to win.

Ferguson, as a manager, and Ken, as a director, are very similar. One's a great manager, the other a great director, but both have a lot of humanity and a lot of humility. They always give you the energy ... with Ferguson when we played a game it was like it was his first game - he's so passionate and gives you ambition every time. And Ken works the same way - they're very similar.

We knew that you don't get to be world champions without a struggle.

You may find another Beckham or Ronaldo, but never ever will you find another Sir Alex Ferguson.

The real fans of football come from the working class. Now they cannot afford to come and watch the game.

I am searching for abstract ways of expressing reality, abstract forms that will enlighten my own mystery.

The French have only negative things to say about everything and everyone.

I have to wear clothes but I don't like to give an idea of what I am with clothes.

If someone is too perfect they won't look good. Imperfection is important.

Football lost its excitement for me.

I try to find different ways of expressing myself. Without that I will die.

Whatever happens, there are always things you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have scored a third. That's perfectionism. That's what makes you progress in life.

I think it's better to be involved in one or two movies a year.

You retire, but you're still aching to play. But in order to play, you have to resist certain temptations, and train hard. And I just didn't have the desire to do that any more.

I'm just enjoying my life at the moment.

You can feel very quickly as a prisoner of your past, of the memories.

I try to be honest.

Sometimes you surprise the goalkeeper and sometimes the goalkeeper surprises you. In my career, I tried to do more of the first than the second.

A good goal is one that is important and beautiful.

When I think football, I think Manchester United. I still support United and always will. I will die with them in my heart.

Actually, I wanted to act even when I was still playing football.

Manchester United is stronger than anybody in the world.

I know that I have a face, a look, people aren't used to seeing. A presence.

Great businessmen are creators.

If you have only one passion in life - football - and you pursue it to the exclusion of everything else, it becomes very dangerous. When you stop doing this activity it is as though you are dying. The death of that activity is a death in itself.

I don't need to be involved with a game watched by millions of people to be fulfilled.

I stopped playing football because I'd done as much as I could. I needed something which was going to excite me as much as football had excited me.

Sometimes you get submerged by emotion. I think it's very important to express it - which doesn't necessarily mean hitting someone.

There were moments - I would be daydreaming - I would imagine scenes, even if there wasn't a camera around. In my head, I was acting.

Some people need to stay at the top. They are afraid to re-start from zero because they fear the critics.

When people are talking about you, it means that you exist.

Some films I say no to and they end up working very well, but I don't care, I just want to do something exciting.

I'm proud of what I achieved there, but a life built on memories is not much of a life.

When I was a child I had a dream to become a football player. I always played as I played when I was a child. I tried to improve. I never dreamt of becoming a professional football player, I dreamed just to play with the best players in the best team. I never dreamed to be paid to play. I would have paid to play an FA Cup Final in front of 80,000 people in Wembley. I just tried to play the wonderful game that football is. So, I hope young players will still have this dream.

When times are difficult, I tell myself, 'I'm just passing through.'

It is enjoyable to make things visible which are invisible.

Every experience makes you a man.

A home is crucial, the foundation of a stable family.

When you are a rich man you are proud to own a Rolls Royce and when you are a poor man you are proud to own a Renault.

I always knew I had to work hard.

Every man who has an idol or admires someone can recognise its themes. It's not only a film about the relationship between fans and idols, it's also a love story, a story of a man who is depressed, who has problems in his relationship with his teenage step-children.

I want to look forward.

In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself.

The pressure people put on themselves and the rivalry between the teams is much more marked. And I think that's a good thing. As long as that rivalry remains within the spirit of competition, it con only spur everyone on.

I like to stay at home and make cinema in my head.

An artist is someone with the gift to light up a dark room.

Socrates worked towards making people question themselves. He like to provoke self-interrogation but wasn't particularly interested in the answers that emerged; he just like to set off the thought process.

In England, your life is your life.

When I was banned for nine months I had an opportunity to focus on something else and I needed to focus on something else. It's who I am. I admire Miles Davis and Chet Baker a lot and I like this instrument, so I tried and I learned and practised for two months. But I stopped after that.

Being French, to me, is first and foremost being a revolutionary.

Without spontaneity in any sport, you cannot succeed.

I think life is a big game we play.

I was always being creative. I could never have played a defensive role because I would have been forced to destroy the other player's creativity.

I have great memories.

I feel close to the rebelliousness of the youth here. Perhaps time will seperate us , but nobody can deny that here, behind the windows of Manchester, there is an insane love of football, of celebration and of music.

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.

Children go where they find sincerity and authenticity.

The ball is like a woman, she loves to be caressed.

My father's parents were from Sardinia and my mother's from Barcelona.

With my two brothers, Jean-Marie and Joel, I wrote a two-page story and wanted to make some kind of movie. We met a French production company, called Why Not?, and the first name we put on the list was Ken Loach. It was a dream for all of us. So, we tried and we met Ken and Paul Laverty, his writer, and they read the two pages and were inspired by that to do something. Paul had the freedom to do his own story - and he wrote his own story, which is better than the one we'd written.

My ancestors were fighters, something I have inherited.

We won the European Championship last September and now the world title. That is some year for French beach soccer! Now comes the hard part. We have to keep improving and that's difficult because it's tough to do better than winning a world title.

You are constantly battling against your own weaknesses to make a good performence.

I started beach football in Monte Carlo when I retired from football in 1997. I liked the game very much.

Domenech is the worst coach France have had since Louis XVI.

Sometimes in life one experiences an emotion which is so strong that it is difficult to think, or to reason.

Often there are players who have only football as a way of expressing themselves and never develop other interests. And when they no longer play football, they no longer do anything; they no longer exist, or rather they have the sensation of no longer existing.