I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

I like to point out that people very often confuse the idea that truth is subjective with the fact that truth is perishable.

People like nonfiction presented to them in a certain way, so that they don't have to think about whether it's true or not. They like it to have that imprimatur of respectability, of genuineness.

They say seeing is believing, but the opposite is true. Believing is seeing.

I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.

The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.

My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.

Everything is a reenactment. We are reenacting the world in the mind. The world is not inside there. It does not reside in the gray matter of the brain.

What is it that angers us?... We have been tricked. In essence, we have been lied to. The problem is not that the photograph has been manipulated, but that we have been manipulated by the photograph.

I think calling someone a character is a compliment.

Dogs, for a reason that can only be described as divine, have the ability to forgive, let go of the past, and live each day joyously. It’s something the rest of us strive for.

The hunger of hell is brought about by the deeds of men.

And I want you to find something in the hills for the vigils to protect, like a rock or a thornbush. I don't want them around here.

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.

Ooh, the silent treatment.

And we believe in his promises. Therefore you can never lose hope - hatikva - because if you keep hope alive, it will keep you alive.

I have confidence in people's basic common sense.

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

Life is lived in the present and directed toward a future.

We are the inheritors of a million years of striving for the unspeakable.