Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies.

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.

I envy certain writers, because there are writers who do go into a kind of different zone, where the writing isn't controlled anymore.

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

We have more information - a glut of information - than ever before, and perhaps less knowledge. That's what's peculiar. And the only way you can deal with it, I suppose, is to make fun of it. I would rather watch Comedy Central for the news than I'd like to watch any other program on television. Maybe that shows you the state of affairs.

The smarter people I know declined to watch the most recent debate [with Donald Trump].

Like all great documentaries, The Act of Killing demands another way of looking at reality. It starts as a dreamscape, an attempt to allow the perpetrators to reenact what they did, and then something truly amazing happens. The dream dissolves into nightmare and then into bitter reality. An amazing and impressive film.