There's this crazy thinking that style guarantees truth. You go out with a hand-held camera, use available light, and somehow the truth emerges.

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.

What deserves my loyalty, art or prestige?

I and motherland are one. My name is Million, because for millions do I love and suffer agonies.

Don't eat because you're angry, bored, sad, or stressed.

Red lights, green lights, stop and go jive. Headlines, deadlines, jamming your mind.

It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.

I'm not really a model.

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

I'm not involved in light, frivolous matters. I'm not involved in fringe or side issues. I'm involved in serious issues.

The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.

Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.