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

Making movies is an effort is an attempt to leave a trace of your existence.

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.

It's rare in a documentary film that you have a repetitive act. So when you do, you can shoot it in different ways so that you have more choices when you're sitting down to edit that sequence six months later.

You have to edit the material. That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the material. Not all minds are the same. Every aspect of filmmaking requires choice. The selection of the subject, the shooting, editing and length are all aspects of choice.

Even if I know I'm going to go to a church, I don't know what the minister's going to say.

I'm interested in ordinary experience, and regardless of the precise definition of ordinary, and I've found that in so-called ordinary experience, there is as much comedy, tragedy, sadness, as there is in great drama. And I don't invent it, I recognize it.