The nature of the video camera really makes you focus on the present. Since I have always been a diarist filmmaker, not one who stages scenes with actors, it has always been about the present moment.

For an artist, to be normal is a disaster

In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.

My films are the celebration of reality, of life, of my friends, of actual daily life that passes and is gone tomorrow. We don't pay attention to it when it happens.

An adventurer can always return home; an exile cannot. So I decided that my home would be culture.

In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don’t care about my cinema. In Europe they don’t know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!

In a meadow full of flowers you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry of life.

The deeper I went into culture, the more confused I got. So I needed something more real. I said, "Okay, from now on, my country will be cinema."

Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life

I'm not an abstract artist; I leave that to others. To me, abstract art ended with Kazimir Malevich's 'Black Square.' To continue it is senseless.

We are the measure of all things. And the beauty of our creation, of our art is proportional to the beauty of ourselves of our souls.

It was only a matter of time. She would love him before the week was out and it would be gloriously terrible, wonderfully hopeless.

You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.

The Internet has established a public sphere and developed a pressure which the government can no longer ignore.

The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.

I read each evening, at night and whenever possible during the day when I am traveling. I have always read.

But optics sharp it needs, I ween, To see what is not to be seen.

I came to water late. I learned to swim at the age of 20.

And so they fought. And so they laughed. Friends. And before they knew it, They were inseparable.

Man needs now no more degrees, but character, No more study, but wisdom.

If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage...we would look at considering perhaps duties that would offset that cost.