Truffaut Quotes & Sayings

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

Everyone who works in the domain of fiction is a bit crazy. The problem is to render this craziness interesting. — Francois Truffaut

It [TV] is the cancer of film. It's why people can't be educated to film. In the late '60s, we expected to see a movie or two every week and be stimulated, excited and inspired. And we did. Every week after week. Antonioni, Goddard, Truffaut - this endless list of people. And then comes television and home video. I know how to work exactly for the big screen, but it doesn't matter what I think about the art of movie-making versus TV. — Jack Nicholson

Francois Truffaut was my godfather on 'Sugar Cane Alley.' He believed in me and in that story, and told everyone that it should be made. — Euzhan Palcy

Truffaut loved Hitchcock. — Noah Baumbach

Film lovers are sick people. — Francois Truffaut

I love the way she projects two facets: a visible persona and a subterranean one. She keeps her thoughts to herself; she seems to suggest that her secret, inner life is at least as significant as the appearance she gives. — Francois Truffaut

The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has. — Francois Truffaut

I warmly recommend to you the films of poets. — Francois Truffaut

I acknowledge Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. They are prostlytizers of English socialism preaching to the converted and telling us what we already know. Cinema is best served away from documentary neo-realism. I come from a tradition of post-post-Italian neo-realism in England, where we've produced the best television in the world. But to paraphrase Truffaut, the English have no visual imagination. — Peter Greenaway

Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings. — Francois Truffaut

It wasn't my childhood fantasy to work with Truffaut or be in obscure films. I like Midnight Run better than I like The Bicycle Thief. It was films like Die Hard and Bladerunner that made me want to be an actor. — Ben Affleck

Airing one's dirty linen never makes for a masterpiece. — Francois Truffaut

I always felt that with an Antoine Doinel film, Truffaut was taking a vacation, that Francois could relax when making a Doinel film. All of the language came to him very easily. 'The 400 Blows,' I felt, was a collage of all his childhood experiences. Every time he felt an Antoine Doinel film was necessary, he'd make one. — Jean-Pierre Leaud

With horror stories in general, I try and take Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock's advice and convey to the audience: Everyone has something to feel guilty about. — Chris Mentillo

I think Ingmar Bergman, Francoise Truffaut - all these people created images in my mind, beautiful pictures, I loved what was known at that time as the foreign film. — Jackie DeShannon

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. — Francois Truffaut

But the cinephile is ... a neurotic! (That's not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it's because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, "When you love life, you go to the movies," it's false! It's exactly the opposite: when you don't love life, or when life doesn't give you satisfaction, you go to the movies. — Francois Truffaut

Taste is a result of a thousand distastes. — Francois Truffaut

The films I liked were European films-Fellini, Antonioni, Truffaut. — Tobe Hooper

Is the cinema more important than life? — Francois Truffaut

An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox. — Francois Truffaut

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a movie theatre is to go down to the front and turn around, and look at all the uplifted faces, the light from the screen reflected upon them. — Francois Truffaut

I think Woody Allen calls it 'anxiety of influence.' When you're in your formative years and you watch a movie that makes you want to make movies ... For Wes Anderson, it's Truffaut. I'm sure for P.T. Anderson it was Scorsese and Jonathan Demme. — Max Winkler

What switched me to films was the flood of American pictures into Paris after the Liberation. — Francois Truffaut

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. — Francois Truffaut

I've always felt that, although Truffaut was greatly revered and admired, at the same time, in terms of film and how much he loved film, he was underestimated. — Nicolas Roeg

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. — Francois Truffaut

In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut, Renoir, Fellini. Because I've always been naturally a more introspective person, I was more interested in becoming a screenwriter than a director. — Hirokazu Koreeda

I love beautiful black-and-white movies - anything Bette Davis, especially 'Now', 'Voyager', 'Casablanca', 'Mildred Pierce'; anything by Orson Welles, Truffaut, or Godard; and 'Paper Moon' by Peter Bogdanovich. — Suzan-Lori Parks

Purely cinematic film ... actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea. — Francois Truffaut

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema. — Francois Truffaut

Truffaut loved actresses, and he was very intense. All the actresses I knew wanted to do a film with him. — Catherine Deneuve

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

Some day I'll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste. — Francois Truffaut

What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it. — Bernardo Bertolucci

Life has more imagination than we do. — Francois Truffaut

I could never have conceived that I would ever get to work in a Truffaut film. It was astonishing to me, and still is. I felt like an old pro, but it was still so unexpected. — Jacqueline Bisset

Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die. — Francois Truffaut

There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors — Francois Truffaut

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

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. — Francois Truffaut

'Battleship' is not a film that Francois Truffaut would have made. Nor would any of those other namby-pamby European directors. Nope, this picture eschews that Continental obsession with small stories, set in quaint towns filled with pockmarked folk doing their banal things. — Seth Shostak

There's no such thing as an anti-war film, — Francois Truffaut

That's one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing's real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection - none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it's not much help to Truffaut. — Woody Allen

The film of tomorrow will be an act of love. — Francois Truffaut

The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. — Francois Truffaut

When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful. — Francois Truffaut

All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance. — Francois Truffaut

My father loved 'Godard and Truffaut.' He was more artsy. My mom loved the 'Bourne' trilogy; she likes big blockbusters. She loved that I did 'I Am Legend.' My passion for acting came with my passion for movies. — Alice Braga

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

At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd be a critic or a filmmaker, but I knew it would be something like that. — Francois Truffaut

I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself. — Francois Truffaut

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

In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs — Francois Truffaut

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. — Francois Truffaut

Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance. — Francois Truffaut

A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking-it always tends to break up as you go along and drag you under with it. — Francois Truffaut

You knew what was playing at Film Forum, and you corrected anyone who lumped Godard and Truffaut together. — Stephanie Danler