Francois Truffaut Quotes

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema. ~ Francois Truffaut

When I begin a film, I want to make a great film. Halfway through, I just hope to finish the film. ~ Francois Truffaut

The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. ~ Francois Truffaut

Everyone who works in the domain of fiction is a bit crazy. The problem is to render this craziness interesting. ~ Francois Truffaut

Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die. ~ Francois Truffaut

I'd skip school regularly to see movies - even in the morning, in the small Parisian theaters that opened early. ~ Francois Truffaut

Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discovering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by Northwest, may assume his prestige has always been recognized, but this is far from being the case.

In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by producer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case.

His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by reviewing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film.
(...)
In examining his films, it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics' approach to Hitchcock.
That is what this book is all about. ~ Francois Truffaut

Taste is a result of a thousand distastes. ~ Francois Truffaut

Life has more imagination than we do. ~ Francois Truffaut

The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has. ~ Francois Truffaut

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist. ~ Francois Truffaut

At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd be a critic or a filmmaker, but I knew it would be something like that. ~ Francois Truffaut

In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs ~ Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings. ~ Francois Truffaut

'Battleship' is not a film that Francois Truffaut would have made. Nor would any of those other namby-pamby European directors. Nope, this picture eschews that Continental obsession with small stories, set in quaint towns filled with pockmarked folk doing their banal things. ~ Seth Shostak

Francois Truffaut was my godfather on 'Sugar Cane Alley.' He believed in me and in that story, and told everyone that it should be made. ~ Euzhan Palcy

Purely cinematic film ... actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea. ~ Francois Truffaut

I am the happiest man in the world and here's why: I walk down a street and I see a woman, not tall but well-proportioned, very dark-haired, very neat in her dress, wearing a dark skirt with deep pleats that swing with the rhythm of her rather quick steps; her stockings, of dark color, are carefully, impeccably smooth; her face is not smiling, this woman walks down the street without trying to please, as if she were unconscious of what she represented: a good carnal image of woman, a physical image, more than a sexy image, a sexual image. --Francois Truffaut, "Is Truffaut the Happiest Man on Earth? Yes," 1970 ~ Francois Truffaut

Is the cinema more important than life? ~ Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock: Definitely, I think the most interesting women, sexually, are the English women. I feel that the English women, the Swedes, the northern Germans, and Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the Latin, the Italian, and the French women. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you and, to your surprise, she'll probably pull a man's pants open. ~ Francois Truffaut

Suspense is simply the dramatization of a film's narrative, or if you will, the most intense presentation possible of dramatic situations. ~ Francois Truffaut

A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking-it always tends to break up as you go along and drag you under with it. ~ Francois Truffaut

The art of creating suspense is also the art of involving the audience, so that the viewer is actually a participant in the film. ~ Francois Truffaut

There's no such thing as an anti-war film, ~ Francois Truffaut

When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful. ~ Francois Truffaut

I love the way she projects two facets: a visible persona and a subterranean one. She keeps her thoughts to herself; she seems to suggest that her secret, inner life is at least as significant as the appearance she gives. ~ Francois Truffaut

What switched me to films was the flood of American pictures into Paris after the Liberation. ~ Francois Truffaut

judge: I think we should place your child under observation in a special home.
Gilberte Doinel: Could it be by the sea, Your Honor?
From The 400 Blows (1959) ~ Francois Truffaut

Gene [Siskel] often mentioned something François Truffaut once told him: the most beautiful sight in a movie theater is to walk down to the front, turn around, and look at the light from the screen reflected on the upturned faces of the members of the audience. ~ Roger Ebert

Film lovers are sick people. ~ Francois Truffaut

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. ~ Francois Truffaut

Some day I'll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste. ~ Francois Truffaut

I never understood the meaning of a film. I am very concrete. I only understand what is on the screen. In my whole life, I have never understood a single symbol. ~ Francois Truffaut

There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors ~ Francois Truffaut

But the cinephile is ... a neurotic! (That's not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it's because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, "When you love life, you go to the movies," it's false! It's exactly the opposite: when you don't love life, or when life doesn't give you satisfaction, you go to the movies. ~ Francois Truffaut

I warmly recommend to you the films of poets. ~ Francois Truffaut

We often do shallow good in order to accomplish evil with impunity. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Only great men have great faults. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We frequently do good in order to enable us to do evil later with impunity exemption of punishment. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Numerical logistic is that which employs numbers; symbolic logistic that which uses symbols, as, say, the letters of the alphabet. ~ Francois Viete

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The highest skill is the true judgment of values. ~ Francois Alexandre Frederic, Duc De La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

I never sleep comfortably except when I am at sermon or when I pray to God. ~ Francois Rabelais

It is not always for virtue's sake that women are virtuous. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

One honor won is a surety for more. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Some crimes get honor and renown by being committed with more pomp, by a greater number, and in a higher degree of wickedness thanothers. Hence it is that public robberies, plunderings, and sackings have been looked upon as excellencies and noble achievements, and the seizing of whole countries, however unjustly and barbarously, is dignified with the glorious name of gaining conquests. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others ~ Francois Fenelon

The most brilliant fortunes are often not worth the littleness required to gain them. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A man often imagines that he acts, when he is acted upon. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We seldom praise anyone in good earnest, except such as admire us. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Happiness often comes when least expected. ~ Francois Lelord

Before putting yourself in peril, it is necessary to forsee and fear it; but when one is there, nothing remains but to despise it. ~ Francois Fenelon

We may as well tolerate all religions, since God Himself tolerates all. ~ Francois Fenelon

There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

In Europe, anti-Americanism is much more a hobgoblin of the political, cultural, and religious elites. ~ Jean Francois Revel

To look, to record, to inscribe, to reproduce, to imitate, to reveal, to imagine are for me the seven keys of photographic imagination. ~ Jean-Francois Chevrier

All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers ... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born. ~ Francois Fenelon

It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The Republic will destroy terrorism. ~ Francois Hollande

It is a wearisome disease to preserve health by too strict a regimen. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Lying gets all the recompenses, then, while despair and loneliness are the rewards of constancy and fidelity. ~ Antoine Francois Prevost D'Exiles

The really pure in heart know nothing of what goes on around them each day, each night; never realize what poisonous weeds spring up beneath their childish feet. ~ Francois Mauriac

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Only the great can afford to have great defects. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If we did not have pride, we would not complain of it in others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D - He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D - since 1806. ~ Victor Hugo

The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A new problem appears: devices that optimize the performance of the human body for the purpose of producing proof require additional expenditures. No money, no proof - and that means no verification of statements and no truth. The games of scientific language become the games of the rich, in which whoever is the wealthiest has the best chance of being right. An equation between wealth, efficiency, and truth is thus established. ~ Jean Francois Lyotard

If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The exceeding delight we take in talking about ourselves should give us cause to fear that we are giving but very little pleasureto our listeners. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The mission of Jesus was not to begin the Christian religion. His mandate was to reveal and redeem the image and likeness of God in human form. While ~ Francois Du Toit

It is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species. Novelties come from previously unseen association of old material. To create is to recombine. ~ Francois Jacob

A large country with such outstanding economic performance as Germany cannot forget that it owes some of its success to demand from other European countries. ~ Francois Hollande

You have heard of the new chemical nomenclature endeavored to be introduced by Lavoisier, Fourcroy, &c. Other chemists of this country, of equal note, reject it, and prove in my opinion that it is premature, insufficient and false. These latter are joined by the British chemists; and upon the whole, I think the new nomenclature will be rejected, after doing more harm than good. There are some good publications in it, which must be translated into the ordinary chemical language before they will be useful. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The desire to be thought clever often prevents a man from becoming so. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are two sorts of constancy in love one arises from continually discovering in the loved person new subjects for love, the other arises from our making a merit of being constant. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The pleasure of love is in the loving; and there is more joy in the passion one feels than in that which one inspires ... ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld