Francois Truffaut famous quotes

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

#Dog #Falling In Love #Lying

In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Funny #Funny Love #Women

Some day I'll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Waste #Film #Critics

When I begin a film, I want to make a great film. Halfway through, I just hope to finish the film.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Want #Film #Great Film

There's no such thing as an anti-war film,
-- Francois Truffaut

#War #Film #Anti War

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

#Agony #Joy #Cinema

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

#Funny Things #Wonderful #Melancholy

Taste is a result of a thousand distastes.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Taste #Results #Thousand

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

#Two #Giving #Secret

I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Reflection

Film lovers are sick people.
-- Francois Truffaut

#People #Sick #Lovers

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

#Jobs #Real #Cleaning

Is the cinema more important than life?
-- Francois Truffaut

#Important #Cinema

Airing one's dirty linen never makes for a masterpiece.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Dirty #Masterpiece #Linen

Purely cinematic film ... actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Expression #Ideas #Film

I warmly recommend to you the films of poets.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Film #Poet

Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Misunderstood #Whole Life #Misunderstanding

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

#Lying #Misunderstood #Directors

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

#Numbers #Directors #Tomorrow

Life has more imagination than we do.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Imagination

But the cinephile is … a neurotic! (That’s not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it’s because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, “When you love life, you go to the movies,” it’s false! It’s exactly the opposite: when you don’t love life, or when life doesn’t give you satisfaction, you go to the movies.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Book #Love Life #Opposites

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

#Directors #Want #Film

There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors
-- Francois Truffaut

#Directors #Good And Bad

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

#Adventure #Artist #Cameras

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

#Humility #Men #Design

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

#Book #Records #Would Be

What switched me to films was the flood of American pictures into Paris after the Liberation.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Paris #Film #Liberation

We often forgive those who bore us, but never those whom we bore.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Forgiving #Bores

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

#Beautiful #Light #Theatre

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

#Men #Thinking #World

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

#Morning #School #Theater

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

#Long #Busy #Enough

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Writing #Novelists

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema.
-- Francois Truffaut

#Falling In Love #War #Cinema

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

#Would Be #Firsts #Filmmaker

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

#Movie #Film #Boat