Quotes from Francois Truffaut

I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job.

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

Today, I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema . I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse.

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

I am often asked at what point in my love affair with films I began to want to be a director or a critic. Truthfully, I don't know. All I know is that I wanted to get closer and closer to films.

There's no such thing as an anti-war film.

The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse.

I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job.

I may find myself changing my notions about what I want to do right in the middle of a film. And on days when I'm feeling merry, I shoot merry scenes, and on gloomy days, I shoot gloomy ones.

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

I prefer to be busy all day long, and when you work for someone else, you're not busy enough.

In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs.