Life is given to you like a flat piece of land and everything has to be done. I hope that when I am finished, my piece of land will be a beautiful garden, so there is a lot of work.
— Jeanne Moreau
Every night I go over what I did in the day, in ethical or moral terms. Have I treated people properly? Did I tell the truth?
During rehearsals I am confronted by things very mysterious. I have terrific fights with inner demons, and it's more painful than it ever was.
To me age is a number, just a number. Who cares?
People's opinions don't interfere with me. Ageing gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking a wreck. That's what they call ageing gracefully. You know?
The life you had is nothing. It is the life you have that is important.
We have so many words for states of the mind, and so few for states of the body.
Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.
Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.
You don't have to be a wreck. You don't have to be sick. One's aim in life should be to die in good health. Just like a candle that burns out.
When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.
To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it.
Something pretty... that's just the surface. People worry so much about aging, but you look younger if you don't worry about it.
People's opinions don't interfere with me.
My face has changed with the years and has enough history in it to give audiences something to work with.
It's just as idiotic to say there is no life after death as it is to say there is one.
If you get trapped in the idea that what is most important is what image of yourself you're giving to the world, you're on a dangerous path.
Life is an accomplishment and each moment has a meaning and you must use it.
I have no doubt who I am.
Usually when a woman is 60, it's over.
I've never worried about age.
Nostalgia is when you want things to stay the same. I know so many people staying in the same place.
It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind me and I see the steps. That's where I was.
Making films is no longer a way of acting, it is a way of life.
Women will not talk about football unless one of them is in love with a football player, and then suddenly you discover that they know everything that is to be known about it.
Success is like a liberation or the first phrase of a love story.
When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art.
What is amazing for a woman of my age is that I change as the world is changing-and changing very, very fast. I don't think my mother had that opportunity to change.
To give a character life in a short space of time, it helps if you arrive on screen with a past.
Some gods may cross your path, but why should gods be beautiful? They could also be frightening.
One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you.
My aim in life is not to judge.
It's dangerous to assert oneself.
I'm always amazed when young women who are having babies want their husbands to watch the babies come out. I would never allow anything like that.
The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.
I work more now because at this time of my life I am not disturbed from my aim by outside pressures such as family, passionate relationships, dealing with 'who am I?' - those complications when one is searching for one's self.
Life doesn't end at 30.
If you're extremely, painfully frightened of age, it shows.
Living is risking.
My life is very exciting now.
I am a woman with absolutely no sense of nostalgia.
I don't think success is harmful, as so many people say. Rather, I believe it indispensable to talent, if for nothing else than to increase the talent.
You should not separate your life from what you do.
When Tony was madly in love with me, his relationship with Vanessa Redgrave was ending.
To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.
Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me.
Some children I have met are very beautiful. Some children are imbeciles, vulgar, terrible.
My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?
Knowing how to die is knowing how to live. What is death anyway? It's the outcome of life.
If you want to live your life through to the end, you have to live dangerously.
