“Het is een risico om hen zo te tonen omdat, wanneer er films over waanzin worden gemaakt – niet enkel over mentaal zieke kinderen, over waanzin in het algemeen – de film over het algemeen vergezeld wordt door wat ik een ‘begeleidend discours’ noem, nl.

“In France we have a saying: ‘Le chemin se fait en marchant’; the path is made by walking it. And that, for better or worse, is how I tend to work as a film-maker. I make my documentaries from a position of ignorance and curiosity.

“The cinema is not a language... That was something that struck me when I suddenly saw the great silent films, not the later ones but the ones from 1915-20, Griffith and Stiller, not Lang and Murnau.

“Exactly half my life was spent in the dark. My life itself was in the dark. I’ve never seen my life in focus. It’s all been a blurred image. Financially speaking, I spent money to buy tickets. In terms of years, I spent my time. And psychologically speaking, I sold my soul to cinema.

Lula: One of these days the sun’s gonna come up and burn a hole through the planet like a giant electrical x-ray.

Sailor: I wouldn’t worry about that, Peanut. By then people’ll prob’ly be drivin’ Buicks to the moon.