Right now, we live in bad times in this country, and the fact that there are filmmakers addressing political and social issues is to me a good thing.

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.

Hamas' battle is against the Zionist occupation in the Palestinian land. Hamas has no desire to change its battlefield.

I think anybody who tries to follow the conventional Hollywood rule, will probably be better liked than the ones who try to think a little bit out of the box.

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.

I don't claim to be a musician, I didn't go to Julliard.

To his amazement, he could already hear Henry snoring in the backseat. That guy could fall asleep on a car trip to the mailbox.

Which is the best religion? [...] The religion that brings you closest to God.

It was the one dream he'd never permitted himself to consider.

I have horrible stage fright - you know how you go through the bi-polar stage fright thing? Then you go on drugs to get over the stage fright and perform, but then you're not funny at all.

I talk with Gary [Johnson] every other day, we're on different coasts usually but we keep in touch and - yeah, no I do not agree with that release.