193 Quotes by Agnes Varda

They always want us to tell stories with action and psychological drama but there are other very interesting directions we can take in time, space, and memory. Emotions, recollections, surprises.

To change history is very slow. The first two times I came to the States – black people didn’t have the right to vote.

I cannot plan anything. I have to have the desire to make a film. Then it’s a joy. You have to pick something you believe in. You have to believe it’s worth it, and that it makes sense for you to do it. If I don’t have that much passion, I won’t work.

I quit seeing some people who were saying bad things about women; I don’t even want to meet them or see them.

I’d say, rather, the unreal that finds expression in the real; the fantastic; a certain surrealism in daily life which ultimately evokes the magic of the chance encounter, the collage of life.

Good cinema is good cinema. It makes you feel like you need to work. Just yesterday I saw a good film, but even if I’d seen a bad one, I’d feel, “Oh my god, what a bad job, I can do better.”

I was eighteen, this was back in ’46, so we also had these very frightening images of soldiers in the streets of Paris. So the effect of war, plus my shyness, plus my lack of education – I was afraid of men, really. It changes later, but it took me a certain time to adjust.

I made a braid because Chinese old people, they say that the God will take you by the hair to join you with – but God didn’t take me, so I cut the braid.

Every time you make a film, you learn something. You approach other people, other people’s work, some landscape you never noticed before. It’s like giving sudden life to what you see and capturing the beauty in it.