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 asked [Donald Trump] if he had any advice for Charles Foster Kane and he said, "Yeah, get yourself a different woman."

There is something about the photographs that is endlessly disturbing. The fact that we like to think of them as torture actually hides what is really deeply offensive about them.

I've been horribly depressed (lately), which, as you know, can be terribly time-consuming. I mean, if you're going to do it right, that is.

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

I believe that we face incredible obstacles in our attempts to see the world. Everything in our nature tries to deny the world around us; to refabricate it in our own image; to reinvent it for our own benefit. And so, it becomes something of a challenge, a task, to recover (or at least attempt to recover) the real world despite all the impediments to that end.

Appearing on the front page of the New York Times even given the state of papers today is still something that's seen by a lot of people.