As a kid, a little kid I loved going to the movies, and now I love making movies.

When you're working on a script, every word that's on the page, somebody has to read it. Make every word count in your stories.

Everything I've made - it doesn't mean they've all been good - but everything I've made so far, big or little, fiction or documentary, has been something that I've been really enthusiastic about.

I'm guided by my enthusiasm.

I also feel that the only thing more gratifying than working with someone who you've worked well with is working with someone new and coming up with something great.

If you're doing a music film, you've got to be singing about something.

I like finding a great shot and then just staying with it for a long time, not trying to pump things up with some kind of artificial energy by cutting.

It's a funny thing with documentary films - you want them to feel as entertaining and as gripping as a fictional film. With a fictional film you want it to feel as realistic as a documentary film.

I don't think of Storefront Hitchcock or Stop Making Sense as documentaries, I think of them more as performance films.

Nothing beats a live performance. Nothing.

Music films are great, but they can never compete with a live performance. Live music is what it is. It's the whole point. You experience it in the moment.

It's a special form of scholarly neurosis, ´ said Camel. 'He's no longer able to distinguish between life and literature.´

I think pressure is a good thing and it's good to be able to feel it and use it and experience the feeling of it and especially if you can get past it.

Don't pessimism and caution naturally go hand in hand?

A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.

Christianity is not about how much faith you have. It's about Who your faith is in.

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.

Most people are much more unusual and complicated and eccentric and playful and creative than they have time to express.

If you're fortunate enough with your history, like with Men in the Cities, your work becomes so absorbed in culture that the authorship of it doesn't exist anymore.

It doesn't matter who's in the box. You go after them and get them out the best way you can.

Maidens hearts are always soft: Would that men's were truer!