There is really not that much improvisation in my films. There is an acceptance of a chance.

When you narrow down your range and are looking through just that narrow aperture of the lens, the intensity of what you see is so much greater.

Say you are doing a portrait and the face is perfectly done, but the rest of it is done in brushstrokes. That is sort of like what might happen in the films.

I do a lot of challenges I run marathons and stuff like that and I like to challenge myself.

Sometimes you talk to people who really don't know anything about your work, and what can you say?

If you think too much in the music you are too late.

Some of my films have caused riots, fights, and all kinds of things.

When my name started popping up I was quite irritated and a little bit in shock.

The things that can go wrong are particular to mediums and they make for qualities that really are of the medium.

To extend the depth of what has been called 'art' into photography requires... making available to the spectator the amazing transformations the subject undergoes to become the photograph.

I am a little bit of a foul mouth and I just like to give it back to people.

She'd also called me brave...unless she was talking to the catfish.

You don't know who's good or bad until you get to that crisis point.

I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.

We lived in a totalitarian system for more than 70 years, and our views are still under its influence. Many heads of state in the former Soviet republics believe that they must have total power.

We should get rid of the SAT as fast as we can. Look, there are bigger problems in society. This is not the biggest problem we have. But it's so easy to get rid of it. Right? Just pull the plug.

Sometimes you need to give people something that's for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it.

Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.

It's very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.

I wish you’d find the exit out of my head.

I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.