All my life I have loved and been inspired by French cinema and as a studio head it has been my pride and joy to have the ability to bring movies to audiences around the world.

I think cinema movies and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

Cinema in India is like brushing your teeth in the morning. You can't escape it.

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

My mom used to have a lot of European cinema playing in the house so I'd catch bits and pieces of films.

And later I thought I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.

What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically having come from television.

I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema.

The truth is often terrifying which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew's cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films they explore the consequences of Neo's choice to know the truth. It's a beautiful beautiful story.

They seem much rarer now those auteur films that come out of a director's imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.

I like to stay at home and make cinema in my head.

It took a while for me to grasp that my colleagues believe I have made an impact on the history of cinema.

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history their literary history their movie literacy their culture their language their religion whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that nor do I want to.

Hollywood films have become a cesspool of formula and it's up to us to try to change it... I feel like a preacher! But it's really true. I feel personally responsible for the future of American cinema. Me personally.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.

I tend to play characters that I can infuse with certain kinds of humour. Even the baddest guy can be funny in his own particular way. I want the audience to engage with the character on some deeper level so that they leave the cinema still thinking about him.

When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema its violence its naivety the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films violence is made consumable.

Feudal societies don't create great cinema we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who ' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams.

The appeal of cinema lies in the fear of death.

I prefer ordinary girls - you know college students waitresses that sort of thing. Most of the girls I go out with are just good friends. Just because I go out to the cinema with a girl it doesn't mean we are dating.

It's up to the courage of the filmmakers to make art in cinema not just business. John was rejected by studios he borrowed money and did movies with his own money. You're either courageous or not. You have to find a way.