The lack of perfection, that's the hardest quality of all, because you're fighting your instincts. You're trained to want to do things perfectly.

Grips and electricians have done more to help me shoot good movies than any other craft.

I'm a great believer in relativity when making movies. Relativity, in my mind, meaning "Light to dark, big to small, good to bad." You visually embrace these things to enhance transitions and instantly paint environments and moods.

Zooms are lazy closeups. And too many people hang their hats on video assist; it's a way to avoid too much. Video assist helps people dissociate from the scene that they are directing. Pretty soon the director will be directing all the way from his apartment.

I don't really like directing. I've had a good relationship with actors, but I can do what I do and back off. I don't want that much romancing. I don't want them to call me up at two in the morning saying, 'I don't know who I am.

A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist, moving an audience... making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark.

There are a lot of cameramen but not so many photographers. And a lot of cameramen attack from a technical approach without much imagination. They look, but they don't see.