Philippe Claudel quotes:

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  • It's always been difficult for me to speak and express my innermost thoughts. I prefer to write. When I sit down and write, words grow very docile, they come and feed out of my hand like little birds, and I can do almost what I want with them; whereas when I try to marshal them in open air, they fly away from me.

  • I think about the sincerity of my writing. I try to be true, to pose questions. Shake people up a bit and make them look in a direction they wouldn't normally.

  • In a novel, language is your principal tool, you try to build pictures in the mind of the reader. When you write a screenplay, the language is just a transition, the final goal is a picture on the screen, it's the only thing the audience sees.

  • Saintliness is very odd. When people encounter it, they often take it for something else, something completely unlike it: indifference, mockery, scheming, coldness, insolence, perhaps even contempt. But they're mistaken, and that makes them furious. They commit an awful crime. This is doubtless the reason why most saints end up as martyrs.

  • An artist is someone who feels the vibrations of the world and tries to transcribe them through his medium.

  • I like speed in thrillers. It's a rhythm adapted to the subject.

  • I'm not imprisoned in any one medium. In films I use techniques that are not necessarily what other directors attempt. When I write novels I also use techniques which can run counter to those that a novelist would use.

  • It's the comedies and thrillers that are successful. People love horror, but in thrillers. Once you speak of pain and suffering it's a different matter.

  • Most of all people respond to a film tackling grave subjects that question and go against the prevailing mood.

  • My work is very controlled. I leave nothing to chance. Chance comes afterward... Making a film is like cooking a pot au feu. You choose the best carrots, the best potatoes the best meat, etc., and you throw all that together - but if there's no soul, so to speak, it won't yield much.

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