Long, long before I became a filmmaker I was talking to killers. Filmmaking was an after thought.

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.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.

I choose to live in peace today. I choose to get lost in my inner beauty today.

Only a man with nothing to hide could make that kind of racket.

None love to speak so much when the mood of speaking comes as they who are naturally taciturn.

Hopefully America will forgive me.

True generosity is too frequently eaten up by prosperity and riches.

A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half. Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

On one of those rare occasions when Bach appraised his own life's work, he remarked: I worked hard.

One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.