We worked on 'Fanny and Alexander' for seven months and it was an amusing production. Still, it was very long and heavy and so awfully complicated, ... And when the premiere was over and everything went well, I thought, 'That's that.'

I have always appreciated the honest brutality of the international film world. One need never doubt one's worth in the market. Mine was zero.

For me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.

I'm very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.

I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.

Sometimes I go for days without speaking to a soul. I think, “I should make that call", but I put it off. Because there’s something pleasurable about not talking. But then I love talking, so it’s not that. But sometimes it can be nice. It’s not like I sit here philosophizing, because I’ve no talent for that. It’s just this thing about silence that’s so wonderful.