My job as a film editor is to construct a dramatic narrative because otherwise it's just a chaotic arrangement of sequences.

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.

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

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.

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

He'd believed it. She couldn't believe that he believed it. Sometimes, she hated him for that.

She was terrified of everything, and terrified to show it.

The kind of people we have in Washington only trust what they think they own.

Not hammer strokes but dance of the water sings the pebbles into perfection.

Follow your dreams and use your natural-born talents and skills to make this a better world for tomorrow.

Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's soul.

Shrews are made, not born.

Grumbling is the death of love

You could not tell a story like this. A story like this you could only feel.