It's a kind of honour when I see how many people are imitating the style of how I make films.

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.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

I love horror movies. I mean, who doesn't like a good horror movie every once in a while? It's fun to get scared.

My life is about building and working and wrenching on some cars.

From a self-conscious standpoint, it's hard to see myself on a screen in a way that isn't just me playing music or doing something silly.

I don't want to die, obviously, but really, the wonder of life is amplified by the fact that it ends.

I love working in New Zealand. It's just the most beautiful country I've ever been to.

I've always wanted to do a horror movie, and I grew up watching a lot of horror. I now, recently in life, don't have the stomach for it because I spend so much time in it.

Harshness is conquered by gentleness, hatred by love, lethargy by zeal and darkness by light.

I read once that [Pablo] Picasso felt if an artist ever felt totally satisfied with a work she ceased to be an artist. With that in mind, it seems like goals are a terrible idea then.

Whenever I see something that challenges me, I take it on.