Like most filmmakers and writers, there are roots in my own life, but they are stories that I invent. There was a period of time in my life when I made directly autobiographical films where I truly told what happened to me. But, now, I don't make directly autobiographical films anymore. I am more for renouncing that and being in front of history. The large part of my work tells about something I know. It's close.
every choice has its obverse, that is to say a renunciation, and so there is no difference between the act of choosing and the act of renouncing
The first step into the realm of giving is. . . not manward but Godward: an utter yielding of our best. So long as our idea of surrender is limited to the renouncing of unlawful things, we have never grasped its true meaning: that is not worthy of the name for 'no polluted thing' can be offered.
If there is such a thing as saintly renunciation, it is renouncing small gains for better gains; not for no gains, but seeing with open eyes what is better and what is inferior. Even if the choice has to lie between two momentary gains, one of these would always be found to be more real and lasting; that is the one that should be followed for the time.
Renouncing the honors at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth. . . and to the maximum of power, I exhort all other men to do the same.
What if the choice isn’t between certainties, between this faith and that, but between faith and doubt? Between renouncing the mystery and embracing it?
It is accordance with our determination to refrain from aggression and build up a sentiment and practice among nations more favorable to peacethat we have incurred the consent of fourteen important nations to the negotiation of a treaty condemning recourse to war, renouncing it as an instrument of national policy.
I may have made a mistake in renouncing my Canadian citizenship, which I have never ceased to promise to try to regain.
No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully.
