If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children.

I would never think of doing a movie for children if I did not have any, … A lot of things in the film I know about. I relate to all the sufferings much more...

[Softening the edges around Fagin wasn’t the only change worked into the current version by Mr. Polanski and Mr. Harwood, previous collaborators on] The Pianist. … to make it acceptable to today’s audience.

I think that something is happening definitely in Korea that is worth watching.

I never made a film which fully satisfied me.

The worst is separation from the parents,

In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it’s on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with...

Rosemary’s Baby

I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I’m playing.

It’s just … I don’t want to talk about it,

to walk for kilometers without socks in boots with bloody feet.

I still had some honor… I still have some now.

People like Truffaut, Lelouch and Godard are like little kids playing at being revolutionaries. I’ve passed through this stage. I lived in a country where these things happened seriously.

I did not have a reputation to defend.

the worst thing ever written about me. It is obvious that it’s not true. I don’t think you could find a man who could behave in such a way. But I think it was particularly...

Oliver Twist.

We also considered shooting it in Romania,

As far as those events are concerned, I would not even start to justify myself…. What I did was wrong and I don’t see why I should go back to this for the purposes of...

Normal love isn’t interesting. I assure you that it’s incredibly boring.

I don’t really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don’t, it’s like telling a...

the next Sharon Tate.

I had to go through it, … I never had a doubt that I would win. Because the truth always wins, sooner or later.

You have to show violence the way it is. If you don’t show it realistically, then that’s immoral and harmful. If you don’t upset people, then that’s obscenity.

I still had some honor, … I still have some now.

is against any kind of principle of show business. If you install some buttons that one can press when decisions should be made at any point of a story, there would be no story.

Every failure made me more confident. Because I wanted even more to achieve as revenge. To show that I could.

In consideration of the horrible things that has happened to the poor man I can almost understand…..or if the (girl) now woman felt justice needed to be served…Having grown up during Nazi Germany, having his...

Nothing is too shocking for me

I knew how people treat a child whose parents are dead,

My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way.

A lot has changed for me. My life has improved. It’s not only children, but the relationship with my wife is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater.

Human life is just a given series, an endless series of such moments,

Whenever I get happy, I always have a terrible feeling.

[Is he unconsciously drawn to survival stories?] You should ask my psychiatrist, if I had one, … But the answer is maybe. Any kind of survival is a subject I enjoy dealing with.

I know that atmosphere of the Parisian apartment building, with the twin menaces of the concierge on the ground floor and the landlord upstairs.

They see me working … but the result of my work escaped them,

I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I’m not envious of anyone-and this is my biggest satisfaction.

Take a look at this railing,

[As for working geographically close to Hollywood,] I don’t know how much being there corrupts the artist, … I’m not able to assess [it]. But I suspect there must be a problem.

There’s no other place in the world where … we could build a 19th-century London and shoot in it for months.