Philip Glass once told me, "They can always copy what you've done, but they can't copy what you're going to do."

My films are as much concerned with truth as anything in vérité. Maybe more so.

Ecstatic absurdity: it's the confrontation with meaninglessness.

I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.

I think we get into all kinds of difficulty by saying photographs should be taken in a certain way which guarantees their veracity. I think that's a slippery slope to hell.

It's so much easier to make a movie about someone who is so likeable that you just want to get out of the way.

Interviews, when they are just simply an exercise in hearing what you want to hear, are of no interest. And many, many, if not most interviews have that character. The interviewer who comes in with a list of bullet points they're going to address one after the other. Interviews, properly considered, should be investigative. You should not know what you're going to hear. You should be surprised.