Francois Truffaut Quotes

#1. 'Battleship' is not a film that Francois Truffaut would have made. Nor would any of those other namby-pamby European directors. Nope, this picture eschews that Continental obsession with small stories, set in quaint towns filled with pockmarked folk doing their banal things.

Seth Shostak

#2. Francois Truffaut was my godfather on 'Sugar Cane Alley.' He believed in me and in that story, and told everyone that it should be made.

Euzhan Palcy

#3. I prefer to be busy all day long, and when you work for someone else, you're not busy enough.

Francois Truffaut

#4. At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd be a critic or a filmmaker, but I knew it would be something like that.

Francois Truffaut

#5. The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary.

Francois Truffaut

#6. I warmly recommend to you the films of poets.

Francois Truffaut

#7. In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs

Francois Truffaut

#8. An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox.

Francois Truffaut

#9. A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking-it always tends to break up as you go along and drag you under with it.

Francois Truffaut

#10. Taste is a result of a thousand distastes.

Francois Truffaut

#11. When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.

Francois Truffaut

#12. The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has.

Francois Truffaut

#13. Life has more imagination than we do.

Francois Truffaut

#14. I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.

Francois Truffaut

#15. I am often asked at what point in my love affair with films I began to want to be a director or a critic. Truthfully, I don't know. All I know is that I wanted to get closer and closer to films.

Francois Truffaut

#16. There's no such thing as an anti-war film,

Francois Truffaut

#17. All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance.

Francois Truffaut

#18. Everyone who works in the domain of fiction is a bit crazy. The problem is to render this craziness interesting.

Francois Truffaut

#19. I'd skip school regularly to see movies - even in the morning, in the small Parisian theaters that opened early.

Francois Truffaut

#20. I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.

Francois Truffaut

#21. The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse.

Francois Truffaut

#22. Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance.

Francois Truffaut

#23. I love the way she projects two facets: a visible persona and a subterranean one. She keeps her thoughts to herself; she seems to suggest that her secret, inner life is at least as significant as the appearance she gives.

Francois Truffaut

#24. Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.

Francois Truffaut

#25. Film lovers are sick people.

Francois Truffaut

#26. Airing one's dirty linen never makes for a masterpiece.

Francois Truffaut

#27. Purely cinematic film ... actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea.

Francois Truffaut

#28. When I begin a film, I want to make a great film. Halfway through, I just hope to finish the film.

Francois Truffaut

#29. Today, I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse.

Francois Truffaut

#30. There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors

Francois Truffaut

#31. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a movie theatre is to go down to the front and turn around, and look at all the uplifted faces, the light from the screen reflected upon them.

Francois Truffaut

#32. Some day I'll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste.

Francois Truffaut

#33. I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job.

Francois Truffaut

#34. Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings.

Francois Truffaut

#35. During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema.

Francois Truffaut

#36. What switched me to films was the flood of American pictures into Paris after the Liberation.

Francois Truffaut

#37. Is the cinema more important than life?

Francois Truffaut

#38. The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.

Francois Truffaut

#39. The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.

Francois Truffaut

#40. I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

Francois Truffaut