- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: Hippie art is psychedelic. It's magnificent. Perhaps it's an explosion of joy.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: Between conception and execution, that's where the tragic difference is found. Like between the cup and the lip, there's bitterness. The shadow falls.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: It's important to always be by the sea. The sea is the element of love. The Greeks say so. Aphrodite emerged from the water.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: Above all, man is nourished by what's marvelous. It nourishes the soul. Like chlorophyll in a tree, there's this secretion, this desire for Eden.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: I'm not into politics. I side with the young people. At all the universities, the men of tomorrow, those who'll govern America, are against the government. They get massacred by the police. It's a wonderful protest against war. Here, basically, it's a revolution without bloodshed. The intellectuals think we should end killing, that killing leads nowhere.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: Basically, painting rivals the splendor of a bird, the opulence of the sea or any landscape -- but it surpasses them.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: For me, the goal of painting is to have light penetrate matter and dematerialize it. It's truly the redemption of matter.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: Painting is something that grows. When you enter inside a painting, you don't know where it will lead. It's an adventure, an exploration. You discover yourself.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: How do we know that death isn't life and life isn't death? Oh, Life... Death... They're like train wrecks. As Cocteau said, "You can't explain it. You feel it."
- Agnès Varda: A painter, my ancestor, my floating root, a member of my family. I knew he existed. A traveler had spoken of him, and I'd read Henry Miller.
- Agnès Varda: What is a Greek?
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: [laughs] A Greek? A Greek? I can't define myself.
- Agnès Varda: Death?
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: We mustn't ask questions larger than ourselves. Life is steeped in death. No doubt about it.
- Oncle Jean"Yanco" Varda: We can't live without color. For me, color is ecstasy and everything but ecstasy is vanity.