Top 55 Claire Denis Quotes

I’m not rich.

I hate the idea of growing accustomed to someone and being faithful.

I always thought Vincent Lindon had a sexy body, a body you can trust, a solid body you can lean on.

Growing up outside your own country makes you feel that you don’t belong when you return, so you feel free to make friends with whomever you like.

A father who sees his daughter leave in the arms of another man does not feel the same as a mother. It is heartrending for her, too. But it is not the same.

I am always asked, ‘You grew up in Africa?’ Every time I introduce a film, or I’m interviewed, ‘You grew up in Africa?’

In Kurosawa’s films, the tragedy is that this strong man was crushed by corruption or mistrust at the end.

I’m not a very brave person.

I hate the victimization of women, always.

Filmmaking creates a sort of – trust, maybe. It has led me to a group of people I feel good with. We have something in common because of film, when otherwise we might have nothing.

I long to make films. I’m dying to be inside the next film. I always hope there will be another film.

Inside the family, you can go from hate to passivity to extreme love within the same hour.

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.

‘Chocolat’ was a sort of statement of my own childhood, recognizing I experienced something from the end of the colonial era and the beginning of independence as I was a child that really made me aware of things I never forgot – a sort of childhood that made me different when I was a student in France.

The cinema should be human and be part of people’s lives; it should focus on ordinary existences in sometimes extraordinary situations and places. That is what really motivates me.

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

Making pizza is a great job. All that kneading the dough – everything to do with cooking is wonderful, sensual.

I really started watching films when I was 14. As I became a teenager, there was nothing that really interested me apart from music, books and films.

We don’t all look alike – some people think they’re tough, some people think they’re fragile – but in the end, we share a lot.

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’m a very sinister person.

I think a film noir demands a beginning and an end.

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.

I have no relationship to the French bourgeoisie. I don’t like connecting with them.

I don’t know – music in film, for me, is not another part of a soundtrack; it is something that also helps to approach a character, to foresee the type of image – you see what I mean – it’s like a part of the process.

I hate family pressures and family responsibilities. I’m more comfortable as a stranger. I always imagined I could just live in a hotel. I’m afraid of family.

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

When I was doing ‘Beau Travail,’ I listened a lot to Benjamin Britten.

There seem to be more women producers than men.

I’m not a tacky person, I think.

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.

A career for me is something like building a bridge. You know, where to put the lifts. You have a plan. I have a blueprint for each film, but not for my life.

What I don’t like so much is to give explanations about people’s behaviour… I’m not interested in making conclusions. I would never think about myself or anyone else, ‘Well, this happened, this happened, this happened, so this must be the result.’ It doesn’t work like that with me.

I didn’t foresee my career. Things happen.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music.

Sometimes I feel like John Wayne.

The history of colonisation cannot disappear.

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.

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 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.

My mother’s father was from Brazil – a painter, and not a famous one – and was always broke. But he was a free spirit, a great grandfather.

I was never very interested in my own experience, I think, in fact, if my films have a common link, maybe it’s being a foreigner – it’s common for people who are born abroad – they don’t know so well where they belong.

What I like is the idea of a group, even if it’s just two people – the idea of solitude within a group.

I am the eldest child; it’s lonely at the top.

I think you cannot make films without choosing everything.

I’m tiny. I’m small.

In a way, I feel obliged to respect Jean Rouch because I am told he is very important.

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.

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.

I’m not witty.

‘White Material’ is about courage and craziness.

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.

When making a film, if I feel nothing in my body, I can’t work. I have to touch. I have to feel. I never stop touching.