Claire Denis

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I'm not rich.”

“I am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound. I am really a very simple person.”

“You don't grow up naive in Africa.”

“I think you cannot make films without choosing everything.”

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

“Africa is no more this poor continent. It's on the march.”

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

“When you have countries that have a lot of minerals and diamonds and oil and are in business with companies from all over the world - but these companies don't share, really, their profits - this is called post-post-colonial.”

“What I like is the idea of a group, even if it's just two people - the idea of solitude within a group.”

“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.”

“I'm tiny. I'm small.”

“The camera is not your eye, and it's not the eye of the audience. I don't think it's my eye, either. It belongs to the film.”

“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.”

“'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.”

“I am the eldest child; it's lonely at the top.”