Chris Marker

“I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining.”

“This is the story of a man marked by an image from his childhood.”

“Humor is the courtesy of despair.”

“I remember that month of January in Tokyo, or rather I remember the images I filmed of the month of January in Tokyo. They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory.”

“Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they are engraved in the memory of death.”

“Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything - except wounds.”

“A cat is never on the side of power.”

“He liked the fragility of those moments suspended in time. Those memories whose only function had been to leave behind nothing but memories.”

“Poetry is born of insecurity.”

“And the cats, to be sure, are there to patch the void and prevent it from invading the whole picture.”

“He told me that in the Japanese language, the word for foreigner is the same as the word for barbarian.”

“I've been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me.”

“After the third world war, there was the fourth. The one we are fighting now, which has as its object the conquest of memory.”

“How can one know that in times of peace?”