I'm too busy to be nostalgic, which is one of the reasons to keep busy. I'm not a very sentimental person.

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.

I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.

I'm very careful of not being critical of other people's movies, which work in different styles. I think some of my movies can be interpreted as critical of their subjects.

I'm in no way suggesting that I succeed, but it's inspiring to read somebody who does succeed and from whom, in a general way, you can draw examples and nourishment and sustenance.

Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive.

Anybody whose mind is functioning at all can't be content with the way the world works.

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

I do not think that my films or films by any other filmmaker represent "THE TRUTH." I do not feel the need to categorize my films or anyone else's.

It is always a problem to know what an image means.

Everything about a movie is manipulation.

To accomplish your mission, follow your passion.

I wish I had been born a storm. No heart, no tears, just a terrible gale'd been good.

I welcome this opportunity of pricking the bloated bladder of lies with the poniard of truth

I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration - joy and pain - sit side by side.

Today is Veterans Day. Thank you to all our men and women who have served the United States armed forces. In honor of Veterans Day we are marching out a few jokes that have already served.

Self respect is impossible without liberty.

Our joy in Him may be a fluctuating thing: His joy in us knows no change.

The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies.

Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.