We say we do this and that. It's all hot air. Usually we do nothing, and if we happen to do something we're horrified, because it's never what we expected.

Détective. Jean-Luc Godard, 1985

Emma. Autumn de Wilde, 2020

The Long Gray Line. John Ford, 1955

And you can't turn your actors into statues. Impossible. Even if we have precisely defined positions, which they discover for themselves, you have to leave a margin of movement otherwise we would be there, screwing them to the ground, moving their feet and driving nails into them...

Jean-Marie Straub in Pedro Costa's Where does your hidden smile lie?.

Détective. Jean-Luc Godard, 1985

Had they been meant somehow for the long jammed and crawling hours of flight from the City, something inspirational to look at, to assure them all in a way not immediately clear it is not the end, or there is still hope ... ? was it only some travel game for the kids, to keep them occupied, to pass the time till the sudden light from behind, the unbearable sight in the mirror?

Vineland (pg. 252), Thomas Pynchon. 1990

The emotional process doesn't interest you. You're interested in cognitive processes.

My fiancée.

Here with you. It's not like in a movie or a book, where everything is precise, thought-out, organised... with a clear-cut goal. Everything's chaos... Chance... Pain... Disorder...

L'amour braque, Andzrej Zulawski. 1985

I put my hand on a stove, to see if I still bleed, yeah / And nothing hurts anymore, I feel kinda free

Ghost Town, Kanye West. 2018

It's not a terrible failure and it's not some unassailable triumph it's... a thing I did.

—Errant Signal

For [Hong Sang-soo], making a film is not the same as unrolling a narrative thread, but rather organizing “surfaces” or putting “fragments” to use within a given structure. (...) The first question the director asks himself is never “what do I want to say?” but always “what is going to happen?” And the answer is never given in advance, since it will be decided in accordance with a given place.

—Romain Lefebvre, Sabzian

"I am a poetry fan; the audience for poetry is quite small, but it does exist. Likewise, just because an art form or a style of film is not popular with a mass audience, it does not mean that type of film should not exist."

—Mike S. Ryan, Filmmaker Magazine