193 Quotes by Agnes Varda

If you know nothing, it could be like an enemy in a way. I think that’s the way I felt when I was young.

You have to be strong to be a carpenter, maybe, but the director of a film doesn’t need to have muscles.

I’m not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman – not unless she is looking for new images.

I’m myself – knowing I’m doing a documentary and speaking with the people, telling them I have a bed, that I can eat every day, but I would like to speak to you. And they really gave me wonderful answers. We got along very well without trying to make me look like I’m what I’m not.

The boundaries between contemporary art and cinema are so rigid. It’s unbelievable. The film critics don’t know my artwork and the art world doesn’t know my films.

It is a question of our minds. What culture deals with is not that we have to learn to see all the Italian painting, all the Spanish painting, this is pilling up information about culture. But what culture means is that we are able to associate real things, nature, paintings we have seen, music we have heard, a book we have read, a film we saw, with our real life, our emotional life, which means a lot.

I don’t watch my own films. There is little time; I’d rather see another film.

I don’t try to make a place in history at all! People put me in the history of cinema because my first film, La pointe-courte, was so ahead of some other filmmakers. Many filmmakers have made resurgent work, and I was just a little ahead of the time.

I have respect for literature. If he found the words, if she found the words – this is a book!