"Respect man's nature without wishing it more palpable than it is."

"An image must be transformed by contatct with other images...no art without transformation."

"Apply myself to insignificant (nonsignificant) images."

"To set up a film is to bind persons to each other and to objects by looks."

"One single mystery of persons and objects."

"One recognizes the true by its efficacy, by its power."

"The greater the success, the closer it verges upon failure."

"The noises must become music."

"Dig deep where you are. Don't slip off elsewhere."

"Draw from your models the proof that they exist with their oddities and their enigmas."

"No absolute value in an image."

"I am inventing you as you are."

"Let it be the feelings that bring about the events. Not the other way."

"Forms that resemble ideas. Treat them as actual ideas."

"They are brilliant...but they miss poverty." (Mozart, on his concertos)

"Let each image, each sound exert its weight not only upon your film and your models, but upon you."

"Your models, once outside themselves, will not be able to get in again."

"An old thing becomes new when you detatch it from what usually surrounds it."

"In this language of images, one must loe completely the notion of image. The images must exclude the idea of image."

"From the beings and things of nature, washed clean of all art and especially the art of drama, you will make an art."

"To translate the invisible wind by the water it sculpts in passing."

"The bonds that beings and things are waiting for, in order to live."

"The true is inimitable, the false untransformable."

"Ils veulent trouver la solution là où tout n'est qu'énigme." (Pascal)

"It is his non-rational, non-logical 'I' that your camera records."

"It is in its pure form that art hits hard."

"Not beautiful photography, beautiful images, but necessary photography, necessary images."

"Fragmentation is indispensable if one does not want to fall into representation."

"Against actors' assurance, set the charm of models who do nto know what they are."

"Make the objects look as if they want to be there."

"Nothing happened. In reality, everything happened. Cinematography, the art, with images, of representing nothing."

"To forge for oneself iron laws, if only in order to obey or disobey them with difficulty."

"Shuddering of images awakening."

"À chaque touche, je risque ma vie." (Cézanne)

"Build your film on white, on silence and on stillness."

"To be scrupulous. Reject everything about the real that does not become true. (The dreadful reality of the false.)"

from Notes on the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson