"My only thought during the editing was that certain things existed which had been filmed, that some film existed and that editing consisted in knowing not what you would like to have said but what the film itself said, which might bear no relation to what you had planned. Editing is seeking the affinities which come to exist between those various moments in film, which exist completely on their own. The fact that at one time there was a camera in front of some people, which made them act in a certain way, and everything they may have thought or said or done at that time no longer has any importance. It is dead and gone; the only thing that counts is what remains, and what remains is a crystallization of it, which is the rushes. And I never tire of looking at the rushes; I can spend days and days with them before I start to edit, and the first splice always feels like a sacrilege. Because we are doing them violence in forcing them to be set out in one order rather than another. That's also why I like to take a very long time editing so that there is time to go round and round it and to go back to the shots which have been cut, the re-takes, the out-takes, and to try to understand what they have to say as well. It's the moment when you pass from the stage of raw recorded reality into the dimensions of a film: that's the point where you have the greatest responsibility, because that is when the film -- whether you like it or not -- is going to start to 'say' something. But it, itself, must say it, not me nor anyone else."

Rivette, Jacques, 'Time Overflowing'. Interviewed by Aumont, Jacques, Comolli, Jean-Louis, Jean Narboni, Jean and Pierre, Sylvie. Trans. Amy Gateff. Cahiers du Cinema 204, (July 27, 1968).