The absence of color can be a stronger factor than the presence of color. [2008]

Wim [director Wim Wenders] and I became well known after L'ami américain (1977) and I made features in Holland, Germany, France and a few - not many - in America. (...) When you're working there, there's not much room for improvisation and low-budget shooting. It's all well-planned in advance. It's all machinery...so at first you are overwhelmed by it and your work starts looking maybe 'American.' After my first film in Hollywood, I could have been booked out for a year, maintained myself there, got a Green Card, joined the union. But it's not really my world. [1993]

I've not been involved with the later Dogma [Dogme 95] films, but I understand them very well, because that's the way I started. We had nothing. I was not frightened to shoot a complete film with one lamp. Or no light at all. As people dare to do it and take the consequences of it, they will find the light. [2008]

In the early days - when I started my career - most cameramen were pretty arrogant. They didn't talk to you. I would have liked it so much to speak with them. But I never have! And now at Camerimage almost everyone you want to see or speak to is there. Storaro [Vittorio Storaro] - whoever - is there and you can speak to them if you want to. Yes, the feeling stays...teacher and student, actually I have always remained a student...like everyone. [2008]

For me, seeing 8½ (1963) was very important. What that cameraman [Gianni Di Venanzo] did there in a tunnel! Really breathtaking! You could totally understand the way he introduced Claudia Cardinale in that film. A fantastic moment. Nicely done. Carried by light. [2008]

There are many films made today where the color is not really necessary, but you don't have a choice because the distributor wants color so he can sell it. But I always have a kind of 'thinking exercise' with the director, 'Why not in b&w?' or 'Why not in color?' So if we explain it to ourselves we know where we have to pay attention because, if you make the kind of films I generally make, color could give you too much information. Alice dans les villes (1974), for instance, would have been very bad in color. The same with Down by Law - Sous le coup de la loi (1986). You would have had so much information around you that it would distract you from what you are telling. "Alice in den Städten" (1974) was originally planned for color. We even had a sponsor, Polaroid, who was bringing out that same year the SX-70 [a compact, reflex-viewing camera for Polaroid film] on a trial market in Florida and they agreed to sponsor us. But when Wim [director Wim Wenders] and I discussed it I said this will be no good in color; this little girl will be totally lost in this loud, exotic New York. Polaroid later agreed but they didn't withdraw their sponsorship. [June 1993]