Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.

Language is the archives of history.

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.