Quotes from Claire Denis

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.

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.

Shoes have a meaning.

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

I don't remember being afraid of anything in making films.

Growing up outside your own country makes you feel that you don't belong when you return, so you feel free to make friends with whomever you like.

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.

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

I'm not a very brave person.

I don't think I see the way bodies move in any special way. People say I do, but everybody moves. I don't see why all of a sudden I'm a specialist in the way bodies move.

I think you cannot make films without choosing everything.

I think cinema is linked to literature by a lot of social ways. Our brains are full of literature - my brain is.

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.

Sometimes I feel like John Wayne.

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

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.

Africa is no more this poor continent. It's on the march.

'White Material' is about courage and craziness.

I'm not a tacky person, I think.

When I was a child I had a nightmare, and in the morning, I asked my mother and father, 'If I kill someone, would you still love me?' My parents were very preoccupied with this, but I think I'm not the only one to ask for that - not love, but absolute fidelity.

There seem to be more women producers than men.

I've experienced love and ambition and desire in my life, but never in the same way as in a family.

Because TV is mostly close up, it has to be fast. And because it has to be fast, you don't have time to explain completely, by a sequence shot, what's happening between people. So instead of experiencing what's happening, say, when a couple is dancing, dialogue is used to explain.