CLAIRE DENIS

You can spend your whole life in France without ever thinking about the Legion.

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.

Often, women as little girls are sent off on a track for them to live a perfect life and be a perfect woman. Not for boys, who can be themselves with their mood and their temper.

Marguerite Duras was a very good friend of mine and an intellectual hero. She was also a sort of mother figure. Of course she was an influence.

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.

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

I hate the victimization of women, always.

I can't imagine a society with absolutely no solidarity. For me, it's a nightmare. And I don't want to live in a place like that.

I am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound. I am really a very simple person.

My grandfather died when I was 12, but I remember the sorrow of my mother. Even now, she's an old lady, but when she speaks about her father, she looks young. A love like that is undefeated, you know?

I'm not rich.

I have very strong relationships with my actors when I'm shooting. When you love an actor's work, you always feel you have to go further, and you make several films together. One film just gives you time to get acquainted.

For some reason, I have always been interested in the stories of people who are exiled and who are deprived of rights. My main motive to make a film is to keep the society in mind and the hospitality adhered.

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

The only thing I find interesting is self-interest.

I reproach so many things about my family, but on the other hand, I kept asking them to be my family.

I've never seen a world where only men were responsible for the violence, and the women were innocent. They go together. Men and women are a violent mixture.

'White Material' is about courage and craziness.

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.

I'm not a tacky person, I think.

A film takes a lot of time, and yet not enough to share with the people you're making the movie with, I think.

I suppose I am interested in the variety of human life - how people live. I am most interested in individuals and how they respond to challenges or to difficulties or just to each other. I am curious about people.

I don't want to be mysterious.

Life is not better and more moral than it was in the '50s. It's just the same.

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.