Life is much more complex than the black-and-white sound bites that you get on television. There are nuances and shades of gray.

I felt like the universe was tapping me on the shoulder saying, "You're the guy who has to tell this story because nobody else is."

You have to remain open to the situation that you're filming otherwise you might miss the story.

What you hope, what you're trusting the filmmaker to do, is to capture the emotional truth of the situation.

If people spend two hours thinking about the direction of their own lives and can relate to the stories they see on screen, to me that's a success.

Any documentary; any capturing of a non-fiction event, is a hyper-realistic condensation of reality that hopefully reveals an emotional truth. It's never the actual literal truth of an event.

I'm a filmmaker who is known for these ambiguous portraits that tell multiple sides of the story without really telling the audience what to think.

The filmmaker is not telling you what to think.

If a concert film is an experience of the musicianship without critiquing it, then this, too, is dropping you into a world and letting you experience it.

I'm an observer in life, not a participant. That's why I'm a documentarian who looks through a camera. I'm not a touchy-feely person; I'm not a seminar person.

The world is watching, and you better be fair.

If there is something in you that is constantly pulling you back, then know that this might possess a power that inhibits you

Civilization is always threatened from below, by patterns of belief and emotion that may once have been useful to our ancestors, but that are useful no longer.

The seeds of salvation are buried in every act of evil.

The Old Testament is actually pretty raunchy. You might enjoy it.

Home was not the place where you were born but the place you created yourself, where you did not need to explain, where you finally became what you were.

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

One of the pre - requisites for children becoming proactive and responsible citizens is the availability of enough role models inside and outside the school.

America is a great place, speech is free and you're able to expose the fact that you're an idiot.

To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.

If you love something, set it free. And if it really loves you, it will find a way to come back.