It is always a problem to know what an image means.

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.

I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.

I'm very careful of not being critical of other people's movies, which work in different styles. I think some of my movies can be interpreted as critical of their subjects.

I'm in no way suggesting that I succeed, but it's inspiring to read somebody who does succeed and from whom, in a general way, you can draw examples and nourishment and sustenance.

I'm too busy to be nostalgic, which is one of the reasons to keep busy. I'm not a very sentimental person.

Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive.

Anybody whose mind is functioning at all can't be content with the way the world works.

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

I do not think that my films or films by any other filmmaker represent "THE TRUTH." I do not feel the need to categorize my films or anyone else's.

Everything about a movie is manipulation.

Maxim 11: Everything is air-droppable at least once.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

With a grin, I told her, "I'll have more than ten minutes' notice that this battle is coming. In that way, this might be the most prepared I've ever been.

I know how to make stuff happen, how to create wealth, create jobs, create investment.

Most of us think we've had more trouble than we deserve.

Experience is only half of experience.

I want to make films that are political and social. Films with a message or an idea. Films that dare to ask.

You've got to earn respect as life goes on.

Keep the corners of your mouth turned up. Speak in a low, persuasive tone. Listen; be teachable. Laugh at good stories and learn to tell them...For as long as you are green, you can grow.

What I try to do is to go into a poem - and one writes them, of course, poem by poem - to go into each poem, first of all without having any sense whatsoever of where it's going to end up

I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it