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.

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.

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.

The imprimatur of truthfulness does not guarantee truthfulness. People should know better. But they don't.

To know the Lord is the gift of peaceful joyful life.

The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good.

Neither am I on an extreme diet nor am I on an extreme workout.

There are few things in life that are harder to find and more important to keep than love. Well, love and a birth certificate.

I have one phobia, snakes. And by snakes I mean intimacy.

A farmer once told me one of the greatest luxuries of his life was to wake up early only to go back to sleep again.

Country is based on folk music, which has been around for centuries—” “So has the plague.

Every job after the first job I got was icing on the cake. This is so much fun.

Coffee is cheap, drinks are an audition, lunch is an interview, but dinner means business; the business of romance.

Like contemporary poetry, philosophy is one of those things, especially at the beginning stages, most people would rather do than study - which is why most of what gets done is so impoverished.