Quotes from Agnes Varda

I think I was a feminist before being born. I had a feminist chromosome somewhere.

My parents named me Arlette, and I changed it to Agnes when I was young. I didn't like it because I don't like names with 'ette' - you know, it looks like a little girl's name.

Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer. Women have to make jokes about themselves, laugh about themselves, because they have nothing to lose.

Gleaning is getting things that are abandoned. I did not abandon my early pictures, my photos, my early films. It's just going through my body of work as something I can pick from.

It's interesting work for me to tell my life, as a possibility for other people to relate it to themselves - not so much to learn about me.

I try to do nothing. I drink rosemary when I have a lot of work to do. People take coffee, they take speed, whatever. I take rosemary.

My mind is often half-sleeping, like in a daydream.

People like my films. They understand me through my films; it's like a connection that has been established between all my work and myself and the audience and the viewer.

It's a way of living, sharing things with people who work with me, and they seem to enjoy it.

Sometimes I want to work with a DP, sometimes I want to work myself. I go to 35mm, 16mm, it's all the same, but it depends on what you want to tell and what are the tools you need.

The boundaries between contemporary art and cinema are so rigid. It's unbelievable. The film critics don't know my artwork and the art world doesn't know my films.

Aging for me is not a condition but a subject.

I think we need to have a nest of something which is family.

It's peaceful to think about the family as a group. I totally believe in extended families.

I didn't go to film school. I was never an assistant or trainee on a film. I had not seen all those cameras. So I think it gave me a lot of freedom.

The freedom he gave himself to work and change shape and change ideas and work all the time with joy, the joy of painting was in [Publo] Picasso, which I found beautiful.