Godard Quotes

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to." [MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.

To be or not to be. That's not really a question.

It's not where you take things from — it's where you take them to.

Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)

A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

Her voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my consciousness.

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

To be immortal and then die

Sometime reality is too complex. Stories give it form.

First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we’re entering the Age of the Ass.

The world isn't a sad place, it's just big.

Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Suddenly, I don't know what to say. It happens often to me. I know what I want to say, I think about whether it is what I mean, but when the moment comes to speak, I can't say it. - Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie.

What is your greatest ambition in life?' 'To become immortal... and then die.

Mirrors should reflect before sending an image.

When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.

Every edit is a lie.

The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second

Photography is truth.

There is no such thing as intellectual property.

Le cinéma, c'est vingt-quatre fois la vérité par seconde.

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order.

I am a painter with letters. I want to restore everything, mix everything up and say everything.

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality.

Poetry is a game of loser-take-all.

Without the threat of suffering, we can’t experience true joy. The best we get is pleasantness

i've always wanted, basically, to do research in the form of a spectacle.

My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof.

Every film is the result of the society that produced it. That’s why the American cinema is so bad now. It reflects an unhealthy society.

It's not where you take things from - it's where you take things to.

This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion

Good films get smaller audiences, but more of the viewer.

In a sense, fear is the daughter of God, redeemed on Good Friday. She is not beautiful, mocked, cursed or disowned by all. But don’t be mistaken, she watches over all mortal agony, she intercedes for mankind; for there is a rule and an exception. Culture is the rule, and art is the exception. Everybody speaks the rule; cigarette, computer, t-shirt, television, tourism, war. Nobody speaks the exception. It isn’t spoken, it is written; Flaubert, Dostoyevsky. It is composed; Gershwin, Mozart. It is painted; Cézanne, Vermeer. It is filmed; Antonioni, Vigo. Or it is lived, then it is the art of living; Srebrenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. The rule is to want the death of the exception. So the rule for cultural Europe is to organise the death of the art of living, which still flourishes.

Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho.

Cinema is capitalism in its purest form.... There is only one solution — turn one’s back on American cinema.

Post-adolescent Expert Syndrome The tendency of young people around the age of eighteen, males especially, to become altruistic experts on everything, a state of mind required by nature to ensure warriors who are willing to die with pleasure on the battlefield. Also the reason why religions recruit kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers almost exclusively from the 18-21 range. "Kyle, I never would have guessed that when you were up in your bedroom playing World of Warcraft all through your teens, you were, in fact, becoming an expert on the films of Jean-Luc Godard.

Patricia: Do you know William Faulkner? Michel: No. Who's he? Have you slept with him?

Don’t ever promise to adore me forever. Let’s keep the feeling that this love of ours is a love without tomorow.

Once we know the number one, we believe that we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus.

Humane people don't start revolutions, they start libraries. And cemeteries.

All you need for a movie is a gun and a cat.

The most fantastic thing you could film is people reading. I don't see why no one's done it... The movie you'd make would be a lot more interesting than most of them.

One can enjoy existence, not life.

Truth is in all things, even partly, in error.

ALPHA-60: Your name is written "Ivan Johnson," but it is pronounced "Lemmy Caution," Secret Agent Zero Zero Three of the Outlands. You are a threat to the security of Alphaville. CAUTION: I refuse to become what you call "normal." ... ALPHA-60: You cannot escape. The door is locked. CAUTION: Try to stop me, pal.

The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea.

You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home.

It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to

There is only one way to be an intellectual revolutionary, and that is to give up being an intellectual

One might almost say that to live in society today is something like living inside an enormous comic strip.

Communism existed once, during two 45 minute half-times, when Honved, from Budapest, won over England by 6-3. The English played individually, and the Hungarians, collectively.

I always feel that a man and a woman, who do not like the same films, will eventually divorce.

Change nothing so that everything will be different

To be immortal and then die.

Take a drawing by Matisse, a simple curve of a leg or a shoulder. Is there a basis, at the beginning when he starts drawing his curve? There isn’t. This is what I’m trying to say. And that’s what comprises the originality of Max Ophuls, which he acquired a little bit at a time, because in Liebelei, in Letter from an Unknown Woman, in his American films, it’s not there. It’s a freedom that is earned and that is found, that isn’t applied. On a basic level, it’s neither better nor worse as a way of making a film. But there’s something extremely original that we found so satisfying back in the day and that continues to satisfy me now … There’s a kind of pure cinema of that era – you might even call it experimental – which has disappeared. There’s no literature…not that there’s no text or dialogue, but there’s no pre-literature. (Jean-Luc Godard in conversation with Marcel Ophuls, 2002)

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

There should be a Stage IV of black identity—Unmitigated Blackness. I’m not sure what Unmitigated Blackness is, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sell. On the surface Unmitigated Blackness is a seeming unwillingness to succeed. It’s Donald Goines, Chester Himes, Abbey Lincoln, Marcus Garvey, Alfre Woodard, and the serious black actor. It’s Tiparillos, chitterlings, and a night in jail. It’s the crossover dribble and wearing house shoes outside. It’s “whereas” and “things of that nature.” It’s our beautiful hands and our fucked-up feet. Unmitigated Blackness is simply not giving a fuck. Clarence Cooper, Charlie Parker, Richard Pryor, Maya Deren, Sun Ra, Mizoguchi, Frida Kahlo, black-and-white Godard, Céline, Gong Li, David Hammons, Björk, and the Wu-Tang Clan in any of their hooded permutations. Unmitigated Blackness is essays passing for fiction. It’s the realization that there are no absolutes, except when there are. It’s the acceptance of contradiction not being a sin and a crime but a human frailty like split ends and libertarianism. Unmitigated Blackness is coming to the realization that as fucked up and meaningless as it all is, sometimes it’s the nihilism that makes life worth living. Sitting

It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to.

Car celui qui saute dans le vide n’a plus de comptes à rendre à ceux qui le regardent.

Tínhamos o teatro (Griffith), a poesia (Murnau), a pintura (Rossellini), a dança (Eisenstein), a música (Renoir). Mas doravante temos o cinema. E o cinema é Nicholas Ray.

People love a seer, until he starts to look beyond them.

Listen to me, normal one! We see a truth that you no longer see. A truth that says the essence of man is love and faith, courage and tenderness, generosity and sacrifice.

You knew what was playing at Film Forum, and you corrected anyone who lumped Godard and Truffaut together.

Art and theory of art, at one and the same time ; beauty and the secret of beauty ; cinema, and apologia for cinema. ' - Godard on Godard: Critical Writings

They’re all gone. Truffaut, Resnais, Antonioni, De Sica, Kazan. At least Godard is still alive, but he always was a nonconformist

Alphaville is the title of one of my favorite movies. Jean-Luc Godard.

« Mais puisque je ne peux pas m’arracher à l’objectivité qui m’écrase, ni à la subjectivité qui m’exile, puisqu’il ne m’est pas possible de m’élever jusqu’à l’être, ni de tomber dans le néant, il faut que j’écoute. Il faut que je regarde autour de moi plus que jamais… Le monde… Mon semblable… Mon frère… »

Art’s despair: its desperate attempt to create the imperishable from what perishes, from words, sounds, stones, colors, so that the space formed might outlast time. Although the mighty build halls, filling them with torches and music, surrounding themselves with bodies and more bodies, and faces and more faces… that too was but a kind of sleep.

O filósofo Gilles Deleuze era há muito tempo o melhor amigo de Bambam. Ele morava e dava aulas em Lyon, mas ia com frequência a Paris. Naquela sexta-feira, 10 de maio, pegaria o trem de volta para casa ás onze da noite, depois de um jantar para o qual Godard e eu tínhamos sido convidados. Nós o víramos algumas vezes, sempre na casa de Rosier e Bambam. Godard e ele tinham uma relação estranha. Pareciam se observar como dois gatos desconfiados, embora soubéssemos que se admiravam e que um falava bem do outro. Reunidos, porém, o diálogo entre eles era truncado. Para mim, Godard justificava a reserva em relação a Gilles Deleuze criticando seu lado abertamente "dândi". Este último tinha a singularidade de usar as unhas compridas de mais, e nunca deixava de lembrar, a quem se surpreendesse com isso, que fazia como Púchkin e que se podia ver nisso uma espécie de homenagem. Godard não compreendia a relação entre o poeta russo que adorávamos tanto e o que ele comparava a "garras repugnantes". Naquela noite, contudo, estavam aplaudindo juntos a abertura, em Paris, das negociações de paz entre americanos e vietnamitas, bem como os acontecimentos do dia e os que pareciam anunciar para a noite.

Teori tentang sinema tidak terletak di dalam sinema, melainkan pada konsep-konsep tentang sinema (outside), namun teori sinema ini sepraktis dan seefektif sinema itu sendiri. Para sutradara itu seperti pelukis atau musisi: mereka menguasai dengan baik tentang apa yang mereka kerjakan. Tapi, ketika mengerjakannya, mereka menjadi sesuatu yang lain, mereka menjadi filsuf atau teoritikus – bahkan Howard Hawks yang menyatakan tak butuh teori untuk berkarya, atau Godard yang dalam berkarya seolah-olah menyangkal teori. C2:280

First, her father had a minor stroke, giving Claire a glimpse of his mortality and, by extension, her own. And then she had a vision of herself thirty years in the future: a spinster librarian in an apartment full of cats named after New Wave directors. (Godard, leave Rivette’s chew toy alone—)

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.

By the time she was their age, she’d seen all the Kurosawas, all the Tarkovskys, all the Fellinis, all the Antonionis, all the Fassbinders, all the Wertmullers, all the Satyajit Rays, all the René Clairs, all the Wim Wenderses, all the Truffauts, the Godards, the Chabrols, the Resnaises, the Rohmers, the Renoirs, and all these kids have seen is Star Wars.

We're born in the museum, it's our homeland after all...

What is your greatest ambition in life? ‘To become immortal … and then die.

Il est facile de choisir les rideaux les plus jolis, les meubles les plus parfaits, de faire les seuls mouvements d’appareil possibles, si l’on sait d’avance que J’on est doué pour ça. De la part d’un artiste, trop bien se connaître, c’est un peu céder à la facilité. Ce qui est difficile, au contraire, c’est d’avancer en terre inconnue, de reconnaître le danger, de prendre des risques, d’avoir peur.

But the strength that remains, which is principally destructive, is the film's dialectical relationship to most of the other movies that we see, its capacity to make their most time-honored conventions seem tedious, shopworn, and unnecessary. This originality often seems to be driven by hatred and anger, emotions that are undervalued in more cowardly periods such as the present...

Se vieron el sábado siguiente y todos los demás sábados de otoño, con Ferguson desplazándose en autobús desde Nueva Jersey hasta la terminal de Port Authority y cogiendo luego la línea IRT del metro hasta la calle Setenta y dos Oeste, donde se apeaba para luego caminar tres manzanas en dirección norte y otras dos en dirección oeste hasta el piso de los Schneiderman en Riverside Drive esquina con la Setenta y cinco, apartamento 4B, que se había convertido en la dirección más importante de la ciudad de Nueva York. Salidas a diversos sitios, casi siempre los dos solos, de vez en cuando con amigos de Amy, cine extranjero en el Thalia de Broadway esquina con la calle Noventa y cinco, Godard, Kurosawa, Fellini, visitas al Met, al Frick, al Museo de Arte Moderno, los Knicks en el Garden, Bach en el Carnegie Hall, Beckett, Pinter y Ionesco en pequeños teatros del Village, todo muy cerca y a mano, y Amy siempre sabía adónde ir y qué hacer, la princesa guerrera de Manhattan le enseñaba cómo orientarse por la ciudad, que rápidamente llegó a convertirse en su ciudad también. No obstante, pese a todas las cosas que hacían y todo lo que veían, lo mejor de aquellos sábados era sentarse a charlar en las cafeterías, la primera serie de incesantes diálogos que continuarían durante años, conversaciones que a veces se convertían en feroces discusiones cuando sus puntos de vista diferían, la buena o mala película que acababan de ver, la acertada o desacertada idea política que uno de ellos acababa de expresar, pero a Ferguson no le importaba discutir con ella, no le interesaban las chicas facilonas, las pánfilas llenas de mohínes que sólo perseguían imaginarios ritos amorosos, eso era amor de verdad, complejo, hondo y lo bastante flexible para albergar la discordia apasionada, y cómo no podría amar a aquella chica, con su implacable y penetrante mirada y su risa inmensa, retumbante, la excitable e intrépida Amy Schneiderman, que un día iba a ser corresponsal de guerra, revolucionaria o doctora entregada a los pobres. Tenía dieciséis años, casi diecisiete. La pizarra vacía ya no lo estaba tanto, pero aún era lo bastante joven para saber que podía borrar las palabras ya escritas, suprimirlas y empezar de nuevo siempre que su espíritu la impulsara a ello.

ما تحقیر را زمانی می آموزیم که عشق می ورزیم..

For J.-L.G., color does not exist simply to show us that a girl has blue eyes or that a certain gentleman is a member of the Legion of Honor. By necessity, a film by Godard that offers the possibility of color is going to show us something that could not be shown in black and white, a kind of voice that cannot resound ehen colors are mute.

I only saw three Dead shows, and it wasn’t for me,” Godard stated. “It was Americana, it was fine, but it was a little slow. It was sort of melancholy and morose, and I wanted something fun and energetic. I didn’t wanna hear ‘He’s Gone’ at some funeral pace, you know? I’d rather hear Phish doing ‘Runaway Jim.

Sólo puedo, en efecto, ser el enemigo de nuestro tiempo ya que su tarea apunta justamente a la abolición del tiempo en el que no veo, en ese estado, que una vida merezca ser vivida

Es hora de que el pensamiento vuelva a ser lo que es, peligroso para el pensador y transformador de lo real

Dans l’ascenseur, il se dit que Godard avait raison : « L’art est comme un incendie, il naît de ce qu’il brûle.

It's not where you take things from--it's where you take them to.

The Children of Marx & Coca-Cola {Limerick} There was a maverick auteur from France who assumed a rebellious stance. His name was Jean-Luc Godard, one part frog, two parts canard, who yanked at the strings of Hollywood's slick song and dance.

Es el triunfo de la simulación donde la impresión de realidad es reemplazada por la impresión de presencia, donde el usuario experimenta la simulación como algo real, donde no solamente la imagen ya no tiene cuerpo, sino donde lo real mismo, totalmente, parece haberse volatilizado, disuelto, descorporizado en una abstracción sensorial total.

kurmaca bir “otomobil uygarlığı” hicviydi: Jean-Luc Godard’ın Weekend filmi (1967).

- Quelle est votre ambition dans la vie ?” “- Devenir immortel, puis mourir.

Hayvan gibi yaşamak için bu dünyaya gelmedik. Fazilet ve ilmi takip etmek için buradayız.

When living in Denver, me and my friend Tony – who’s actually up here now and does amazing photography and helped us with the photoshoot for this collection – we did this funny thing on the anniversary of the stock market crash. It was a protest at a mall in Denver, and we called it “Black Friday is the new Black Monday”. We wanted to make the hipster thing into something else, we wanted to see what potential it had. Because we were fascinated by Paris 68, we made these pamphlets that said stuff like “Real hipsters riot”. We tried to encourage that mythology of the hipster from Sorbonne, Paris. This guy you see in Godard movie. We went into Urban Outfitters, threw a bunch of shit, flipped over things, went outside, shot a bunch of fireworks. That was pretty cool. The IEF was grounded in certain theoretical premises of insurrectionist theory, continental philosophy, and critical theory. It was definitely all over the damn place.

Draw your head to your knee: As you breathe out, lift your right leg, keeping it straight and holding your foot in both hands. Tilt your head forward to touch your knee. Return to the starting position and repeat several times.

© Irina Sarnavska - Lenivitz Production Tortoise

El cine, como el cristianismo, no se funda en una verdad histórica, nos da un relato, una historia, y nos dice ahora: cree, y no dice concede a este relato, a esta historia, la fe propia de la historia sino: cree, pase lo que pase

A new generation of American directors, reared on Fellini and Godard, was itching to rewrite the rules: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich.

A bolt of lightning forked down from the sky into Maya’s chest. The wound on the girl’s hand closed, and her eyes popped open. The witch outstretched her palms over the girl, who was no longer human, but rather an immortal slave bound to the witch. “Arise, my avenging angel.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: " It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: " It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.