Quotes from Jean-Luc Godard

We once believed we were auteurs, but we weren't. We had no idea, really. Film is over. It's sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur.

I am trying to change the world.

A film ingeniously directed does indeed give the impression of having been laid end to end, but a film ingeniously edited gives the impression of having suppressed all direction.

I am nowhere. You can call me the man in the middle.

I learned from Rossellini that you are rich even if you have a little money.

If you have $300,000 to shoot a cigarette on a table, it's an enormous amount of money. Maybe that's why my movies are the way they are. But it's the only way I can make a living.

Self-portraits have been done in painting, but never in music or literature. It has no meaning, it makes no sense. And in movies I was wondering if it could. And how.

Words and action in movies are the spirit or the mind. And these days the body is almost completely forgotten. In the beginning the body - nature - was more part of the action.

There are two kinds of homeland: one that is given is like a negative, and one that you have to conquer is like the positive.

The fact is that, unless you are very good, most first movies are too long, and you lose your rhythm and your audience over two or three hours.

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.

Photography is truth.

Three-quarters of directors waste four hours on a shot that requires five minutes of actual directing. I prefer to have five minutes' work for the crew - and keep the three hours to myself for thought.

I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.

At the cinema we do not think, we are thought.

I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.

Film is like a battleground: There's love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word, emotions.

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.

I don't think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can't kiss a movie.

Give us this day our television, and an automobile, but deliver us from freedom.

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.

Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)

Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.