“If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.”

“I don’t like the idea of “understanding” a film. I don’t believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn’t. If you are moved by it, you don’t need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.”

“We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.”

“There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self, we gain immeasurably.”

“We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time... detached.”

“Objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisiacal awareness freed me from the reality external to myself. The fire and the rose, as it were, became one.”

“All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.”