The filmmaker is not telling you what to think.

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."

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

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.

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.

I have knots in my years that I can't undo, and this is one of the worst--the night I did wrong and Mauma got caught

When sustainability is viewed as being a matter of survival for your business, I believe you can create massive change.

To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.

I gave up on the big screen. The Witching Hour was at Warner Bros. for 10 years and it just didn't work out.

It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent.

Poetry is not a creed or dogma. It is a special way of speaking and listening.

Not only is the destiny of the individual bound up with the entire Church; it is responsible for helping to sanctify the entire world of nature and history.

I'm not going to stop having problems.

Believe the unbelievable, dream the impossible, never take no for an answer.

Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well.